sybarites

I think it’s safe to say that, while on this journey, Marc and I have been pretty open minded about the food we’ve eaten.  Some of the nerds who have been reading this blog since we left will recall that we’ve tasted fresh, curried, goat in Rajasthan, century eggs in Hong Kong, betel leaves in Gujurat, beef spine in Korea, and – lest we forget – fermented horse’s milk in Mongolia.  All of these things required a certain degree of bravery, a certain forced ignorance of the contents of our mouths as we chewed and swallowed.   But sometimes, we just don’t possess the courage to eat the unusual.

Most recently, as we travel through a region whose inhabitants will glean sustenance from almost anything, we’ve come across a few things that have proved too much for our sissy Western palates.  There were the fried tarantulas being sold by a couple of women at one of the rest stops on our bus journey from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh (I wasn’t even brave enough to take a photo, let alone taste one);  there were the crispy, deep-fried locusts which, again, I couldn’t bring myself to try;  and the fertilized duck eggs.   On  menus in Vietnam, we’ve seen ‘Fried Mouse with Onion’, ‘Fried Pork Hearts’, ‘Chopped Snake’, and a whole section dedicated to eels.  But  who am I to judge what is or isn’t edible?  At home, I eat oysters, snails, beef carpaccio and American cheese.  Thus, until I have tried any of these Asian menu items, I am just a pot calling a kettle black.

When we do get past the fried mouse though, there are some tasty things to be had in restaurants and from street vendors hereabouts.   We had a fantastic $0.80 lunch of BBQ pork with spicy vegetables and rice from a street vendor in Cantho, several marvelously delicious Vietnamese iced-coffees (we are up to 3 per day now),   and bright, fresh salad rolls dipped into spicy, peanuty, vinegar sauce.

It’s hard to prove but there seems to be an inverse relationship between the seediness of a food stand/restaurant and the brilliance of the food it produces:  the seedier the joint, the more tasty the food.  For example, on our first night in Saigon, we made it a priority to find and procure a decent bottle of wine to enjoy on the balcony  unexpectedly attached to our room in the guest house.  But what to consume with the wine?   After eating out so many times and for so long, there are times when we just want to stay in, and this was one of those times.  So, imagine how pleased we were to see a woman with a stall a block from our place selling Vietnamese sub sandwiches for $0.40.   Even better, there were a bunch of locals beating a path to her stall which is always a good sign.  We stepped right up to order two and watch as the fresh baguettes were filled with crisp veggies, a little soft, French cheese, and several kinds of unidentifiable meats and sauces.  When we got back to our balcony, I admit that I did open the baguettes and pick out the chunks of pork fat but otherwise, to quote Marc, “Those were the best forty-cent sandwiches I’ve ever had.”

Also of note, are the frog’s legs and the pho (pronounced like the ‘fu’ in ‘full’), a lovely, beefy soup with rice noodles, fresh basil and lime.  How could we visit Vietnam and not have pho at least once every two days?   The version to beat is the one I had today at a place called Pho 2000 where, according to the prominently displayed photos, Bill Clinton visited for lunch.  His people must have known the right people in order to find this joint.

The frog’s legs with mushrooms and garlic were something that Marc ventured to order while we were in Cantho.  I tried my first-ever bite of amphibian thigh and agreed that it tasted of chicken but with the delicate texture of a fish;  quite remarkable, actually.  The wine that he ordered, however, could be described as “grape juice with added alcohol” or as “a cross between a wild-berry vodka cooler and prison wine”.   Vietnam can cook a mean frog leg but it’s got a ways to go in the wine department.  I guess French colonialism can only penetrate so far.

I expected Phenom Penh to be a cross between a small Indian city and rough Ulannbataar, instead of a French colonial city with France’s refine tasted and inexpensive wine. Three restaurants we sampled provided some world class food for shoestring budgets.

On New Years Eve, after walking the riverfront reviewing menus of the many tourist-friendly restaurants, we selected the Dutch-owned Frizz for it’s authentic Khmer specialties and lengthy wine list. It was one of the best meals we have ever eaten. The beef with smoked eggplant was truly unique, with a subtle mix of tangy sauce and earthy spices. Amok, our second dish, is a common Cambodian dish of curried fish wrapped in a banana leaf and Frizz does an exceptionally good job in presentation and flavor. The hot evening called for a bottle of house white in an ice bucket to bring our bill to nearly $20 USD.

Across the street from the notorious Tuol Sleng genocide museum is the Boddhi Tree, a restaurant which deserves fame in its own right. Jan and I ordered triple-decker sandwiches with goat cheese, grilled eggplant and other vegetables. After craving goat cheese for months, it was a euphoric treat.

On our last day, we visited Friends Restaurant which trains street kids for opportunities in the restaurant industry. A small army of students and a few teachers, all of whom seemed to be in their late teens or early twenties, runs a slick operation with attentive servers, a creative menu and tasteful décor.

We selected dishes from the tapas menu, crustini smoked eggplant dip, marinated fish and cucumber salad, crispy shrimp wontons and cashew chicken with mango. Our drinks, green peppercorn strawberry margarita and chili pineapple margarita, complimented the tequila with sweetness and a little heat to create exceptionally creative and tasty margaritas.

Still eager to explore the menu, Jan finished off with splendid caramelized pineapple and ice cream, and I tried the lemon and blueberry cake. Again, we kept the meal under $20 USD.

Lonely Planet also directed us to a supermarket where we took advantage of the colonial legacy to self-cater a meal to remind us of France. Few pleasures beat brie, a good baguette and a bottle of wine sitting on a patio on a beautiful day. We already feel Phenom Penh’s epicurean luxuries pulling us back.

As if being the actual city where they actually filmed Octopussy (!) wasn’t enough, we have spent many beautiful evenings in Udaipur watching the sunset from our hotel’s rooftop patio overlooking the lake (and palaces) while sipping our G&Ts. We’ve consumed yet more good food and met some new people.

One friend we met, Krishna, was able to arrange for us to learn how to cook real Indian food from a lady who lives here.  Our attempts at making Indian food at home have been hit and miss because we don’t know exactly how to cook things, what some ingredients are and how the finished products should taste.

At least now, after joining Krishna on an early morning trip to the farmer’s market in town…

…and after having joined Hashouna in her kitchen at home…

…we have a much better idea of what to do.   With the exception of the take-out food we had at Dave & Karen’s in Halifax, Hashouna’s was the best Indian food I have eaten.  I look forward to attempting palak paneer again, now that I’ve tasted the best.

Ahmedabad isn’t really renowned among tourists as anything special. As a hub in between Mumbai and Rajasthan, it serves the travelling crowd well with several hotels, but doesn’t offer a lot of excitement. It is chokingly polluted – so much so that at times it was difficult to breath for the exhaust fumes – noisy and bustling but we had read about a great restaurant serving Gujarati thali so we had to give it a try.

Thali wasn’t something I was really familiar with before we visited India as I hadn’t seen it on menus in Indian restaurants before, which is basically the limit of my knowledge of Indian food. We read that it is kind of an all-you-can-eat tray of various foods and sauces but that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Also, the thalis vary according to region and we heard that Gujarati thalis were quite unique.

So, with anticipation of trying something new and delicious, we dressed up in our Indian finery (me in my new salwar kameez and Marc in his new polyester dress pants and sandals) and walked over to the House of MG Restaurant on the rooftop terrace of a heritage hotel.

In the lobby, we were presented with two set menus from which to choose: thali or deluxe thali. Each menu listed a string of dishes of which we had never heard so we just shrugged and selected ‘thali’. We were then led upstairs to the covered part of the terrace where the first course of veg pakoras and some kind of corn bread-y stuff was served with a coriander yogurt and a green, anise-flavoured juice. (We had stupidly forgotten the camera and were correct, it turns out, in thinking that we wouldn’t remember the names for any of the foods.)

Next, we were ushered onto the main dining terrace, lit with candles and decorated with small palms and ferns. At this point, we were given a menu of the meal which was about to be served (of little help to us stupid foreigners- for us, it read as “Eat the barblekurt with the skolwot”) and two small pages of instructions on how to eat thali. If not for that instruction sheet, we would have been entirely lost. As it was, we were pretty challenged by the whole affair. Unfortunately, it was a bit early so there were no other guests which meant that there was no-one else whom we could observe and copy.
First, they set a large stainless tray in front of each of us on which were placed four small stainless bowls. Each bowl contained a sauce/soup: yellow and savoury (dal?), white and sweetened, another savoury and something else with lentils. Then came two more serving dishes, one with a raw vegetable salad and one, a tray of condiments: spicy, jammy, raw onions, limes, and lime relish. With all this on our table, we had absolutely no idea where to begin; do we serve ourselves some salad? eat one of the soups, or are they actually sauces? select some of the garnishes for our plates? wait for more food? Oh yes, and there was a glass of salted buttermilk with floaties to drink.

The instructions, to which we referred for about the tenth time, said that thali is eaten with the hands, which we already knew, but that there are a number of rules to follow with regard to which hand is used for what. Right hand for eating, left for serving and drinking; but what about the soups? Do we dip stuff into the sauces with our fingers even though its hot? It was 80% mystery. Besides a couple of spoons for serving, we had no other utensils and, therefore, no choice but to just dive.

Eventually, we were served some chapatis which we knew we could tear into pieces and use to scoop up bites of food, and about four other servings of vegetables – bean salad, cauliflower stuff, eggplant stuff, something else… – and another couple of side-dishes/bowls with spiced yogurt and something else. It must seem obvious that we had virtually no idea what we were eating. But, fumbling though we were, it was all, without exception, very tasty thali and we ate until we were obscenely full.

The last challenge came in the form of paan. I’ve read about this in novels but could never discern what it was; it can be sweet, I knew, and could contain tobacco but that isn’t enough description to actually determine what paan is. Again, we had to pantomime our ignorance to one of the wait staff who demonstrated that the betel leaves wrapped into triangles around ‘something’ were meant to be eaten and swallowed as a kind of digestive. I took a big bite of one and learned that paan is filled with various spicy bits (anise and clove were the only two I could recognize) and menthol. I must have chewed for ten minutes before being able to swallow. That was my first, and will be my last, experience with paan.

At least we have pictures of a couple of things we ordered when we returned to the informal, ground-floor garden part of the restaurant. Never a disappointing dish.

This morning, we treated ourselves to a morning walk to the Starbucks on Istiklal street. There are 36 Starbucks in Istanbul and so far, we have seen only his one. It’s in a trendy area and it seems to be full of business people and private school teens.
During the afternoons, the pedestrianized street looks like this:

In the mornings, it is much less crowded so that we are able to walk without concentrating on not running into other tourists or Turks. Most stores seem to be open again after the end-of-Ramazan celebrations, so it’s nice to window shop again for clothes and shoes, scarves and tea, baklava, tree-trunk sized kebaps and turkish delight.

We don’t go for Starbucks very often here because of the option of going for tea. Served scalding hot, with two lumps of sugar in a small glass, our tea breaks have been something I look forward to each day. In our favourite tea shop, a short walk up the hill, there are boardgames and backgammon boards for people to use while sipping and puffing on hookahs. It’s cozy inside, with lounging cushions and pillows on the floor in a couple of rooms, and booths and easy chairs in the front and back. Such an enjoyable ritual to adopt.

Having failed to find cilantro, fennel, cardamom or ginger for some of our favorite recipes, we thought we might have more success with a Turkish recipe. Turkish Lamb Pitas with Tomato Sauce were a surprising tasty treat, even though we didn’t find cilantro—apparently it’s not actually Turkish. I feared using too much allspice, but it added a pleasant earthness along with the mint. We couldn’t seem to stuff enough yogurt into the pita, having to repeat the process as we ate to the bottom.

Pastries in Turkey are mostly variations on baklava, nuts and pastry soaked in syrup. We found a little shop in Beyo?lu with continuous stream of customers waiting for their turn at the counter, always a good sign.

Of the three pastries we purchased, the pistatio baklava was by far the best, probably the best I’ve ever had, and the other two were a bit of a disappointment. The large square was mostly shredded wheat, sort of like the cereal with a layer of nuts and soaked in a syrup. Unfortunately that syrup was not very sweet or otherwise flavorful. The green roll was almost mushy with the not-so-sweet syrup and the pistatio flavor was subtle. However, we are not giving up, there are many more sweets to try at the same store. Perhaps we can watch what other people order.

We like coffee with our dessert and what better coffee for Turkish baklava than Turkish coffee. I knew nothing about how to make it. When Janet inquired about the location of the Turkish coffee pot I responded, “That cup with the stick on it?” Fortunately we found an entertaining web page with excellent step-by-step instructions, so Janet was able to make it successfully on the first try. The process is quite touchy, requiring the right combination of water, sugar and coffee and then must be carefully heated and stirred in several steps to create a foaming reaction. The taste is…different, sort of like burnt chocolate. It is bitter, as expected, but not thick, except for the sludge that formed on the bottom of the cup. I’d drink it again.

We’re the kind of people who enjoy a good breakfast. Hot or cold, buffet or continental, greasy spoon or white table cloth, Western or Asian, anything and everything. We even ate the sad little breakfast spread they had in Budapest at our budget hostel: sugarless Tang, stale-ish buns, plastic cheese, sliced “meat”, wretched cornflakes (how on earth could cornflakes taste bad?) with UHT milk and weakened instant coffee. How is Nescafe coffee at all, I would like to know? It’s like drinking dirty water poured through an old oil filter, with sugar. Further, I found that adding UHT milk to the blend does not inch it any closer to tasting good. Indeed, this practice threatens to reverse the breakfasting process.

But, I digress. We have come across more good breakfasts than bad in our travels. Notable on “The Bad List” are Budapest, Kaifeng, China (flavourless, gristly meat in a steamed bun), and Vienna (similar to Budapest but served in an old college mess hall). Leading on “The Good List” are Paris (strong cafe with buttery, flaky, sinful croissants), Tallinn (fresh juice and fruity yogurt), Bolshoe Goluostnoye, Siberia (kasha with fresh cream and blinis with homemade jam), and now, Marmaris, Turkey.

Staying with Mom and Dad on their boat in Marmaris, I was so happy to have access to a kitchen again—pardon me, a galley—that I promptly suggested eggs benedict for our first morning on board. Just thinking of it makes my mouth water: nice eggs, fresh Turkish bread, ladles full of hollandaise sauce… Plus, I busted out Dad’s old stovetop espresso maker and brewed up some blistering-hot coffee with the grounds brought from Amsterdam especially for that purpose.

And what could make eggs benny taste even better? Eating it outside in the sunny cockpit, bobbing on a clear, green sea.

And then there was the Turkish breakfast on Day 2: dried apricots, almonds, walnuts, goat feta, olives, fresh bread, honey, and more espresso.

Already I liked Turkey and we had barely made it beyond the boat. And even when we did move past the dock, it was to visit the pool. When we actually started to venture into town via a mini-bus called a dolmus (Turkish for “full”), we were well into the tourist resort-mode of drinking good, frosty local beers, roasting our pale selves in the sun and keeping an ever-watchful eye for doners and kebaps. Of course, with that attitude, we fit right in with the tourists in Marmaris and the boating crowd at the marina. Sun, food, a little chilled gin (actually, a lot of chilled gin) and a pool? Why would we leave?

We have been making gluttons of ourselves with the Hungarian repasts. On the night of our arrival, the fellow working the reception desk at our pension recommended a place that makes good Hungarian food for a reasonable price and is within walking distance: the only three criteria we had for our supper. (Actually, we would’ve broken down and eaten almost anything at that point – even KFC! – as we were starving and tired and much too sober.)

The recommended place, Thokoy Etterem, was fantastic. We don’t have pictures of the goulash and cabbage rolls but imagine both served under generous portions of sour cream and you can imagine how pleased we were with the meal (dodged that KFC bullet). Also, a trio of musicians played traditional Hungarian music as we ate, until the fiddler noticed that I was listening and then came over to our table to serenade us with old Beatles tunes.

The following morning, we headed straight for a coffee house recommended by our guidebook as “a classic”. Apparently, idealist types in the nineteenth century used to meet to discuss politics in the coffee houses of Budapest and, often, a revolutionary movement would be named after the coffee house in which the principle discussions were held. We went to Gerbaud’s to have sachertorte, fruit torte and bitter, little coffees. (I don’t know of any ‘Gerbaud’ movement…)

Shortly thereafter, we met with The Largest Meals We Have Ever Been Served at a pub on the Pest side of the Danube that we entered just moments before it started pouring rain. Because pub food tastes better when it is cold outside, we each ordered a heavy meal: smoked-meat-stuffed schnitzel for me; liver-stuffed schnitzel for Marc. Add a couple pounds of potatoes and a half kilo of rice to the table, plus two cups of cabbage salad and a liter of beer, and we have our lunch.

Plus a digestif of Unicum, a black, spicy, Hungarian liquor which started being produced again in the country in 1989.On top of all the food in my belly, it was potent enough to take my breath away and lovely enough to think about ordering a second.

We were exceedingly lucky to have met some new friends in Siberia: Sophie and Fabrice Page. At the time, they were generous enough to offer to let us stay a few nights with them in Paris when we arrived. We happily took them up on the offer because we are, in point of fact, generally friendless and always happy to gain some local know-how.

The Pages live in Bazemont, a small village West of Paris, so we were able to visit a small market, eat fresh croissants and bread from the village bakery (thanks to Sophie’s early morning run) and taste vegetables fresh from the garden for lunch, along with BBQ ribs. One major highlight was the six different kinds of cheese they had procured in anticipation of our visit. (My reputation as a cheese fiend preceeds me.) We tasted Roquefort, Comte, Camembert, chevre, Roucoulou, and blue. And if that decadence wasn’t enough, we also comandeered the kitchen to make Marc’s favourtie dessert: Lemon Cakes with Lemon Basil Syrup.

The first night we arrived in Paris, Fabrice arranged to take us to a classic, old, French brasserie on the left bank where we ate duck, lamb, roasted chicken, cheseses and desserts; not to mention the wine, which was exceptional.

Sophie and Fabrice also introduced us to gallettes, which one takes with cider, and crepes with chocolate and peach jam. And, as a piece de resistance, they drove us up to the North coast in their Audi TT where we ate a tasty seafood lunch and strolled the beaches of Normandy. We were close to Juno beach, where the Canadians landed in 1944. And in Cabourg, we learned what a “Monaco” drink is: half lemonade, half beer, splash of grenadine. See below.

When we set off on our own in Paris, the first thing we did was indulge in a bed-picnic of bread and cheese.

There have been Eiffel Tower picnics since then- we just don’t have pictures of them.

I’m down to one Korean meal a day. I’m really sick of eating kimchi, which the Koreans seem to eat three times a day without fail. When eating ‘ethnic’ food they must have an ‘ethnic’ substitution such as a bowl of sliced pickles with a pizza or a small seaweed salad with sushi.

When I want burgers, I want Lotteria. Most of the burgers have a Korean twist, but they’ve also out-done the West with some of our own ingredients, such as with my favorite, the European Frico Cheese Burger.

Take a slice of good cheese, bread it, fry it and insert it as an extra patty = absolutely brilliant. How could North America have overlooked this? Also included is a slice of yellow pepper and black olives. I’m not a fan of olives, even on pizza, but it’s great on this burger. A few other noteworthy Lotteria burgers:

• Kimchi Burger: Janet likes this one, a breaded patty of spicy cabbage.
• Bulgogi Burger: A giant patty of famous Korean BBQ.
• BBQ Paprika Burger: The sauce is quite good on this double patty burger.
• Chuncheon Dakgalbi Burger: More of a typical chicken burger than the spectacle of dakgalbi.

Of course, the local interpretations can be less pleasing. Potatoes on pizza are popular. The last pizza we had included a ribbon of rubbery cheese with mashed sweet potato piped on top. At least the traditional ingredients in the middle were good.