sybarites

One of the best things about staying here in Dreamville (aka. Berkeley) is its proximity to überDreamville. Just a quick trip on public transit across the bay and we’re in within reach of the Ferry Building Market.

This is the market to end all markets; big, crowded on the weekends, expensive, touristy and overflowing with delicious, pretentious food- my favourite. First things first, though: if we were going to make a trip all the way across the Bay, we were going to first visit Marc’s all-time favourite coffee place, the Blue Bottle Company on Linden. A mere slip of a place, it serves coffee and espresso-coffees from freshly roasted and ground-to-order beans. We made quick work of finding it again and slurping down a delicious macchiato and cappuccino. (Sidebar: it turns out that there is a café 5 blocks from our house that sells this very coffee, about which we knew nothing until last weekend. We plan to be regulars.)

From there, it was a long-ish walk down Market street to the Ferry Building so we stopped, briefly, at Crate & Barrel – just briefly- just to see what they had on sale. An hour later, we continued the journey, with nothing to weigh us down but a mental list of all that we saw that we “needed”. Seriously considering starting an heirloom cast-iron frying pan.

Finally, there was the Ferry Building. We needed lunch, we needed oysters, and we needed to browse the food stalls and kitchen store. Lunch was most critical so we ate at the first place we saw that wasn’t – for the moment – overflowing with customers, Lulu Petite. Marc ordered a duck confit and arugula sandwich and I had a ham & provolone melt with truffled honey. We also had some sort of extravagent sparkling pomegranate juice and it was all extravegently delicious.

Next, we tried to visit Hog Island Oysters for a little oyster sampler but it was egregiously busy and there was a waiting list to sit at the bar, so we walked over to the seafood company and ate two each, raw, barenaked and juicy, from the kid selling them at the little table out front. Even that kid was busy, taking money in between his concentrated shucking.

The food stalls were a little too busy to peruse, even for us, so we instead inspected all of the products on offer at Sur La Table. Unfortunately, we could not justify buying all the things we wanted – what with the fact that we are leaving in a couple months – so settled for just an oven themometer and a promise to return if/when we can really do some damage.

On the second day of our Inca Trek one of our fellow trekkers overheard Janet and I talking about my birthday. He brought it up at lunch and by dinner the tour company had arranged a little celebration.

After dinner the gas lamp went out and in came a cake with “Feliz Dia Marc” written across it with dulce de leche and a single candle. Everyone started singing happy birthday. How the cook had managed to bake a cake at an altitude of 3800 meters and over a propane stove will boggle me for years. We suspect he did it in a pressure cooker. The cake was dense and tasted a little like pancakes, though not unpleasantly so. The icing was fluffy and not overly sweet. Overall, it was one of the best birthday cakes I’ve ever had. To top the night off, the guy that originally heard it was my birthday pulled a miniature bottle of Jack Daniels Single Barrel from his back pack and gave it to me as a gift.

I had expected my birthday to go by quietly, but it turned into a very special, memorable birthday.

Yesterday, we made a fortunate and random coffee stop at a place called Cicciolina’s, in Cuzco. They have an exceptional bakery, tapas bar and fine-dining restaurant all in one building. I had to try a flaky croissant with cheese and basil, even though I had already eaten breakfast. Perusing the tapas menu, we decided to return for an early birthday dinner at the restaurant, since we would be hiking toward Machu Picchu on my actual birthday.

Cuy, or roasted guinea pig, is a traditional Peruvian specialty and was actually depicted as the meal into which Jesus and pals were about to dive in the last supper painting in Cuzco’s biggest cathedral. We weren’t going to go out of our way to try it until we saw it on Cicciolina’s starter menu. A fine dining restaurant is usually a safe place to explore the unusual. The guinea pig confit was served in a terrine of sorts with two different mashed starches: one was yucca, the other we were not able to identify. The meat was mild with the texture and color of dark chicken meat or domestic rabbit, rather than the strong flavors of game or wild rabbit. This marks the first time that Janet has eaten meat from an animal which she has also had as a pet. I still can’t make that claim.

Janet followed that up with an alpaca steak, her first camelid meat, in a four pepper cream sauce with crispy yucca souffle and oven roasted tomatoes. The alpaca was much like a beef steak, but a little tougher and stringier, although not unpleasant or strongly flavored. I played it safe with lamb. The surprise turned out to be the mashed starch, which tasted like liver had been added. On it’s own it wasn’t particularly pleasant, but when tasted with the lamb it became a rich earthy flavor that wasn’t overpowering. For dessert we tried the pear poached with lemongrass and coriander.

Everything was so good we stopped in for lunch this afternoon and our sandwiches did not disappointed. I ordered the serrano ham with machengo cheese, roasted red peppers, carmelized onions and organic arugula grown in the nearby Sacred Valley. Mmmm, sacred lettuce. Although none of those ingredients are particularly unusual, they were all very high quality and complimented each other extremely well. It’s hard to go wrong with carmelized onions and arugula. Janet ordered a tasty teriyaki chicken sandwich with avacado, toasted seasame seeds and organic greens. Our drinks were equally special—lemonade with mint and ice tea with mint, cinnamon sticks, and whole cloves.

The experience made me dread going home where we may not find such interesting food or will have to pay four times as much for it.

I am a huge fan of the set lunch menu. If ever we come across one on our travels, especially if it is of the French variety, I insist on making an effort to give it a go. Nine times out of ten, it is a delicious lunch for a great value, usually three courses with a drink and maybe even a coffee thrown in at the end. If we´re lucky, two of us can get a big meal for under $20. Plus, I have a theory that these lunches are even more delicious if there is a crowd of people in the restaurant and a queue at the door.

Twice in recent weeks we have come across dreamy set menus. The first was in the antique-y, bohemian barrio of San Telmo in Buenos Aires. We were actually looking for some other restaurant with a set menu and happened across a cafe named something like ¨Via Via¨. Anyway, it was crammed full of suits but we managed to snag one of the tables and ordered “dos, por favor.” This one was only two courses: roasted quarter of a chicken, salad and rice with home-made ice cream for dessert. Simple enough menu for a late lunch but it was hot and tasty and left us full enough that we didn´t need to eat again that day.

For the past two days, we have eaten lunch at the same cafe in Valparaiso, Le Filou de Montpellier. Yesterday, it was a crepe filled with bechemel and cheese to start, then roasted chicken with this fantastic mushroom reduction sauce and then profiteroles with ice cream and chocolate sauce. It´s making my mouth water just to remember it. With wine, it was $22 dollars and there was a queue of people at the door waiting for our table. Hurrah! The meal today was a tarte of tomato, eggplant and camembert, slow-cooked beef in wine sauce with a gratin of potatoes and then Ile Flottant for dessert. No wine this time (thanks to a pisco-induced hangover today) but still, the best-value lunch menu I can remember having had. If we were staying here longer, I can almost guarantee that we´d be going back at least every other day. As it is, we´ll be going back tonight to Alegretto for – arguably – the best pizza I´ve ever had. We may not be eating classic comida Chilena, but I´m digging the food here.

It’s no secret that the people of Argentina and Chile adore their meat. It is available everywhere, on every menu, in several different forms, served day and night, and almost always grilled to well done. I wouldn’t want to be an animal in South America as it’s only a matter of time before you end up on a menu.
At a grocery store in Mendoza on a Saturday, a riot* of people had gathered around a meat counter that was struggling to keep up with the orders being shouted to the back. Meat is serious business and a good butcher, we’re told, is highly coveted and his address is held close to the chest. In Argentina, I thought I had reached the limit of my carnivorous consumption, but I was dead wrong; that was just the beginning.

Today’s lunch in the pretty Bellavista neighbourhood of Santiago consisted almost entirely of meat. We ordered the parrilla special for 2 and what landed on our table would’ve easily served six. Imagine a 9×9” square casserole dish filled to heaping with 2 big, grilled pork chops, 1 large, grilled steak, 2 blood sausages, 1 spicy chorizo sausage, 2 huge, grilled chicken breasts, and 2 large, boiled potatoes. That was lunch. There was some thyme on the chicken, and there was a salt shaker on the table, but that was all the seasoning that appeared. Luckily, a stray dog sleeping the shade of the next table was only too happy to eat most of what remained on my plate while the waiter wasn’t looking.

*Speaking of riots, it turns out that there was some serious rioting in Santiago the day we arrived. It was the annual Day of The Young Commbatents riot/protest staged in memory of the 1985 student riots during which many students were killed. This year’s anniversary protest was aggravated, we’re told, by some discontent with recent public transportation changes. At any rate, our afternoon arrival at the bus station, metro ride and walk through part of the downtown area was entirely uneventful; we didn’t sense the slightest whiff of unease. When we arrived at our hostel, one of the guys staying there asked, “What are the streets like out there- is it madness?” Of course we didn’t know what he was talking about and it was then that the hostel worker said that yes, there were riots, and that perhaps we should stay in the hostel that evening. The next morning, the news showed this. Santiago makes two cities now that we have visited while riots were in progress and we didn’t even know it. (The other was Budapest in September.) Stupid foreigners.

We found a small premium wine tour with Ampora Tours to the Uco Valley, the supposed “next Napa Valley” and home to the highest vineyards in the world at 1,100 to 1,300 meters. The sandy soil, sunny days, cool nights, lack of rain, and abundant spring water all create perfect conditions for great grapes with concentrated sugars and thick skins. After picking up the three other tourists we visited three vineyards of different sizes with our guide.

The tour was nearly continuous hilarity from the beginning and wine only added to the Canadian humour. Upon finding out the other tourists in the group were staying at the Park Hyatt, we started hypothesizing who would stay at this elite bastean of elegant class. I guessed Americans and Janet guessed Germans. Both wrong: two youngish Canadian women, Sharon and Linda from Vancouver, travelling on their oil and gas money. They vowed revenge if we published this picture of them. So be it.

The first vineyard, Estancia Ancon, was the smallest vineyard with a production of 90,000 bottles. The Grande Reserve de la Familia blend of cabernet sauvignon, malbec and pinot noir, a limited edition of 6,000 bottles, was our favorite wine of the day, although our palettes were still fresh at the time. The atypical blend had a pleasant smoothness from the pinot noir and oak. The property’s villa can also accommodate tourists for an undisclosed sum.

Andeluna, the second vineyard, was a little bigger. The suburban-country tasting room was warm, though a little contrived. We tried five wines with the 2005 Malbec and the 2003 Pasionado Blends being our favorites.
The last vineyard was O. Fournier. The owners told the architects that visitors should either hate it or love it, but never forget it. The ominous concrete structure fulfilled that mandate; it kind of looks like an airport terminal. To avoid pumping the wine, the lowest level is 20 meters underground. Whole grapes are crushed at the top level, then slide down to the fermentation vats on the next level, and then are aged in oak barrels on the last level. We toured the cellar on catwalks where we also viewed enourmous pieces of art from a local artist.

A highlight of the tour was the four course lunch at the winery’s by-appointment-only-restaurant. A colourful trio of warm soups—potato, pumpkin with pepper and greensquash with spring onion—were served in shot glasses and followed up with a few simple treads of julienned peppers and eggplant with oil and salt. We were surprised to find the Malbec held up to the red wine vinegar in the salmarejo, a cold gazpacho-like soup, which followed. Alfa Crux, a wine we tasted at Vines of Mendoza, accompanied the requisite beef entree. The dining room’s six meter high windows were intended to provide grand views of the Andes, but instead the clouds provided a white backdrop which only partially cleared.

After a day of wine we were noisely cracking jokes and laughing and the two Canadian women setting the pace. As the only male in a party of six, I couldn’t offset the natural tendency of the drunk women to get rowdy and talk about men. Somehow, one of the owners’ father at the next table managed to fall asleep over the ruckus at the next table. Fortunately, the ladies directed most of their interest to the driver, the waiter and the security guard, who one hoped would require sexual favors in place of a lost receipt.

I can’t resist adding this post about the Sensory Tasting because it was some of the best fun we’ve had on this trip.

To learn how to properly taste wine, the Vines of Mendoza set up this flight of wine and provided us with an instructor to learn some of the finer details on how to properly taste wine. It turns out that just popping off the cork and slugging it back does not equal tasting.

The special tasting room (!!) was prepared with three different, non-blended local wines: a Torrontes, a Bonarda and a Malbec. However, in addition to the wines, there were tasting glasses filled with the flavours that one is meant to experience in each wine. For example, the glass of Bonarda was accompanied by a glass each of earth, dried leaves, quince jam, and pepper. So, after one swirls and takes notes on the wines appearance, one is meant to sniff the aroma and compare it to the raw elements. How much fun is THAT!

And then we got to taste. And taste and taste, and sniff and taste and note… yet another blissful afternoon. Funnily enough, our tolerance for alcohol seems to be increasing with our knowledge of wine.

Two random couples we met raved about La Cabrera, a barbeque restaurant in Buenos Aries, one fellow saying he would return to BA just to go there. We showed up at 9pm, an early arrival by Argentinian standards, just to ensure we could get a seat without waiting, which we barely managed.

The steaks are so big that it was recommended that we only order one to share, which we gratefully followed. Janet couldn’t even finish her half. We also ordered a salad which turned out to be nearly the size of a KFC bucket. Luckly we skipped the side of mashed potatoes with carmelized onions, which surely would have been bucket-sized as well. The steaks here were extremely good, but it is really the side dishes which made it an exceptional experience.

Most steaks in Argentina come without sides, which are ordered separately. At La Cabrera meat is served similarly to Korean food, with a dozen little ramekins filled with savory treats—antipasto, mashed potatoes, roasted garlic with a sweet sauce, carmelized pearl onions in demi glaze, sauteed mushrooms with gravy, picked beets, mashed squash, couscous and a couple of others that we didn´t even taste.

We’ll be trying to reproduce the experiece at home.

Before we had even set foot in Japan, I had compiled a list of things that we needed to do and see in our quick, 3-day stopover in Tokyo. Predictably, I listed things like “eat sushi” and “visit Imperial Palace” but the item that ended up being my favourite was “have drinks at Park Hyatt”.

The background here is that the bar in which the movie “Lost in Translation” was filmed is the New York Bar on the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt in Tokyo. I love that movie and so, in the same way that I insisted on visiting James Bond-related venues, I really wanted to see that bar. Plus, it has a great view of the city.

In order to cross this item off our list, we first needed to address the wardrobe situation. Being that we continue to travel exceedingly light (though I am now loathe to admit that we have had to purchase an extra bag to accommodate some newly acquired hiking boots required for South American treks), our wardrobe is limited, to say the least. My best clothes, my very best, are a skirt and black T-shirt. But I have no nice shoes and so the best clothes are downgraded even further to black pants, black T-shirt, black runners. Marc has a nice, collared shirt, but one pair of pants he has doesn’t match and the other pair is too small… Friends had told us that when they visited, they were asked to change into some clothes lent to them by the bar. We really didn’t relish being embarrassed by our clothes so did what we could to appear as stylish as possible and hoped for the best.

Then we set out on the journey to get to the hotel. The subway, including transfers, took nearly two hours to get across the city. By the time we got off the train, we knew we weren’t going to beat the 8 o’clock deadline, the point at which they start charging a $20 cover per person. Having already resigned ourselves to the extra charge, we started walking what we figured would be about a kilometer to the hotel. About a kilometer and a half later, we were lost. With some map checking and back-tracking, we finally found the hotel but had to further wend our way through the first floor to find the escalator to the lobby on the second floor, to catch the elevator to the 41st floor, to connect to a different elevator to the 52nd floor. One really has to want to get to this bar.

We arrived and were greeted without so much as a glance at our attire (whew!) and then were seated at the end of the long, high table near the back of the room (the one at which Bill Murray sits after he films “It’s Suntory time”, in the film). There was a live jazz quartet, a beautiful menu and a great cocktail and wine list. Marc veritably swooned when he had his glass of La Crema Pinot Nior and I was exceedingly pleased with my mangosteen martini. Midway through our drinks, we couldn’t resist ordering Crispy Veal Sweetbreads on Risotto and Fire Roasted Sardines with White Asparagus Salad.

According to the menus, those were just appetizers but even in our alcohol infused state, we could not justify spending $80 for a rib eye steak or – perish the thought – $190 for the Kobe beef steak. We did have one more glass of wine, though. In total, for two people, two drinks each, two appetizers: $200CAD. Obscene, opulent, delicious, exquisite. Unrepeatable.

Rising at dawn, we visited the Tsukiji Fish Market for the height of the morning rush. After navigating our way through the trucks, vans and motorized trolleys, we found the main fresh fish market with hundreds of vendors selling fish whole, filleted or still alive. Men ran frozen tuna through enormous band saws while others filleted eel after eel or sliced off chunks of fish with a knife three feet long, any of these jobs requiring rubber boats, plastic pants and a wet suit like jacket to keep warm and dry.

Some of the tourists wore plastic bags on their shoes, but that is dangerous on slippery concrete floors running with water and blood. With fish and guts everywhere, I was surprised by the complete lack of smell. Perhaps it’s different in the summer, but on our visit everything was surprisingly fresh.

It was hard not to consider the enormity of it all—a vast industry cleaning the ocean of edible life. At no point could we see the entire market and this was only one market in one city. Live sea cucumber to whale bacon, all prepared or packaged to feed our enormous population.

Those contemplations didn’t stop us from enjoying a sushi breakfast at one of the many restaurants that fringe the market. In Tokyo, few people speak English, but most people are used to dealing with people who don’t speak Japanese. In this case we were directed to the wall menu for a choice of the $20 set or the $30 set and an Engligh drink menu was provided. As the sushi chef completed a serving, he dropped it in front of us on a black laquered board that ran around the bar, which was used instead of a plate. Wow, so fresh. Most were the usual suspects, tuna and shrimp, but one animal we only reconginized from the fish market—a sort of dark flattened shrimp. It tasted much stronger than a shrimp, not something I’ll likely seek again.