sybarites

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.

Janet had nearly convinced me to give up on coffee until we returned to Seoul. The five dollar cappuccini made from water and powder were less than satisfying and a waste of our funds. The Lonely Planet Guide, usually referred to as “The Book”, recommended a coffee shop in Gyeongju called Clara & Schumann. Although it stated the place was for coffee lovers, we weren’t even sure it served espresso.

We arrived sweaty after a long walk in the heat. My macchiatto was on par with the Blue Bottle Company in San Francisco, the best I’d ever had. However, the whole experience was outstanding. The owners seemed to know more about coffee than anyone I’ve ever met. They didn’t speak much English, but they went to extremes to ensure we they had the best coffee and everything complimented the coffee. It didn’t hurt that they gave us a lot of free stuff to enhance our experience.

On the first day we polished our first cups off too quickly, so we were brought cups of a mild coffee almost like tea. It was thin and weaker than I’m used to, which I would normally associate with bad coffee, but these people are very deliberate.

Besides the usual cappuccinos and lattes, one can select from dozens of beans which are ground specifically for the order. However, prices are different depending on the coffee and how strong you want it. Rather than using a machine, water is poured by hand over the grounds and the water tempurature is closely monitored. The Wedgwood cups were nice too. I’m glad I didn’t break one.

On the second day, my macchiatto was not the best compliment for the cheesecake we ordered so I was brought an espresso. Later, we were given Double Toast, two inch thick toast with butter and jam. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed butter. On the third day we were brought complimentary cappuccinos for no particular reason.

I’m not entirely sure why we stopped in Chuncheon. The guide book author made a passing remark about eating there and it was on the way to our next destination. We found a nice motel room with a balcony, run by a friendly young couple. Note: a motel does not mean a room with an exterior entrance, as it often does in North America. Motel is an inexpensive hotel catering to young couples, and married men with their mistresses. They are generally not sketchy, but don’t ask for a twin.

One of the ‘must do’ activities in Chuncheon is to eat dakgalbi, spicy chicken. An entire street is devoted to dakgalbi restaurants. As soon as we stepped onto the street, a woman came and pulled at Janet’s arm and started talking quickly in Korean to lead us to her restaurant, thus thwarting my plan to look around before selecting a restaurant. We followed her in and our usual menu challenges were absent as the woman simple asked, “Two?” When eating on this street you are eating dakgalbi.

The stove was lit below our enormous personal cast iron skillet and hurriedly filled with a mountain of half-frozen chicken, gnocchi-like pasta, spicy sauce, cabbage and a few other vegetables. It all cooked down to a small mound, but we were still unable to finish it or the compulsory set of kim chi that accompanies every meal. We were also provided with aprons to keep our clothes clean. My apron was spotless, my shirt was not. Somehow, four spots of hot sauce avoided the plaid barrier to hit their target, my white shirt. The meal was tasty and filling, especially with a bottle of soju to wash it down with.

Fueled with dakgalbi from the previous night, we rented bicycles to casually bike around the lake. Not content with the scenery near the city, we headed south toward the countryside. Two wrong turns, a poor map and some not-so-helpful directions lead us up a series of hills. At one point we cycled over a hill to a dead end in a rice paddy. We never made it to our rural destination, but we did manage to find a pleasant and flat path on our return.

Of particular importance during our visit to Beijing was the opportunity to try Beijing duck. Being the milquetoasts that we are, this turned out to be more of an adventure than we anticipated.

First, there was the question of how we were going to make a reservation. Our guide book (without which we would have been hard pressed to function well) suggested a restaurant but made it clear that the staff insisted upon a reservation. Had they not used the word ‘insisted’, we might not have bothered but, in the end, we decided to just call and see if we could bludgeon our way through the language in order to book a spot. Marc lost the rock-paper-scissors and so he made the call. “We may or may not have a table for two at seven.”

Now the second challenge: find the restaurant. Our obstacles were the following: different spellings of the name of the restaurant depending on which map we consulted, an inability to pronounce the name of the restaurant properly, an address within a maze of hutong (small alleyways) which didn’t appear on any map we had, and a city in a frenzy of destruction and reconstruction of great areas of itself in anticipation of the 2008 Olympics. We had tried to find a bar the day before and were completely unsuccessful owing to the fact that not only had the bar changed its name and moved, the building it was in, and almost the whole street it was on, was in the process of being torn down. We gave ourselves a 30-minute window to this restaurant that looked to be approximately 5 blocks away. 28 minutes after setting out, Marc returned breathless to the spot I had been waiting while he scouted out the area for the restaurant. It had been an unsuccessful mission. Also, after 20 minutes of waiting , I started worrying that he had fallen into an open excavation and that, while standing there alone on the street corner in my only nice outfit, people were probably beginning to think I was a lady of the night.

As a last ditch effort, we approached a rickshaw driver and pointed to the name of the restaurant written in Chinese characters. He was happy to offer to take us there for what amounted to quite an inflated price. We in no position to bargain very much and so settled on a price quickly and jumped into the back of his converted motorcycle-rickshaw. A few weaving alleyways later, he stopped to ask for directions and we exchanged a glance that asked “should we turn back now or let ourselves become even more lost than we ever have before?” Just then, Marc spotted a sign for the place “Liqun Roast Duck Restaurant” and we hopped out in front of a place that truly lives up to the description of being a hole in the wall. Though these often prove to be where the best food is, so I was actually a little encouraged, if extremely over-dressed.

We walked inside, past the open, wood-burning stove, into a very crowded restaurant. We managed to charade that we had called for a reservation. A woman nodded and led us past a couple of other waiting fellows to our table in the back. Seconds later, the two fellows that were waiting at the front joined us at our table for four which, we guessed, meant that we were sharing. Not to worry, we ordered two of the ‘house specialty’ which looked to be roast duck with an assortment of appetizers (?) and beer. As the plated began to arrive, we learned that our neighbours had ordered the same thing and we found out that they were Japanese. A table of tourists!

And now the next challenge: figure out what we’re about to eat and how to eat it. We got six plates immediately: a plate of small, thin crepes, some broccoli, spears of cucumber, a dish with brown sauce and slivered scallions, a plate of ??, and something that looked like duck foie gras. We tasted each and, indeed, all were as we thought, including dish xyz, which was made up of a vegetable – more scallion? – and a meat – unidentifiable, slightly chewy, but not unpleasant. Normally, an unidentifiable meat would seem a bit disconcerting but I’ve lost track of the number of times we’ve been served something which we are completely unable to identify beyond being a part of either the plant or animal kingdom and we just have to dive right in. Most often, we eat the whole plate of miscellany without ever having been able to identify what it was, so we didn’t have much concern about tucking into this meal. However, at this point, I broke the number one rule of eating miscellany in China: don’t examine it. After a few bites, I had a closer look and it came to me that this was probably a plate of duck tongues. And then I was only able to to manage a few more bites before imaging the quacks that these tongues had once made and I pushed the dish aside. I didn’t feel too badly about it as our Japanese table mates hadn’t even touched their foie gras.

After some time, our neighbours’ roast duck arrived. It came whole, with the head attached, and we all took pictures before it was carved (which came as a relief as I was a little worried that we’d be presented with the whole thing and left to fend for ourselves armed only with wooden chopsticks and a sharpened bottle cap).

It was served on an enormous plate and there was enough lovely carved meat and crispy, fatty skin to have fed all four of us. They started in while our duck arrived for its photo session. It turns our that we were pretty lucky to have been sitting with these two as one fellow was living in Beijing and showed us the proper way to eat it: fill a thin crepe with duck and a little of each of the plates of what we had thought were appetizers, roll it up and dip into the brown sauce. With encouragement, further instruction and many napkins, we were able to eat our traditional Beijing Roast Duck and it was delicious, further strengthening the theory that some of the best food is served in the seediest joints.

Now that we had become friends, our table mates asked for a couple of extra glasses and offered us a shot of the beiju they were drinking. I had read about this drink, a traditional rice wine with over 50% alcohol content. Of course, we accepted. And again, and again- pause to order a second bottle – and again. It made the duck taste even better.

After all that adventure, and all that rice wine and beer, we figured we could find our way back through the maze to the hostel. Fortunately, our dumb luck led us straight there, where we could recommend this wonderful restaurant to other travelers.