Category: Destinations

Summer Break #3: Does Turkey Produce the World’s Weirdest Drink?

Want a real mind-bending experience when you travel?

Don’t worry so much about what to eat. Focus on the odd things there are to drink.

That’s where you get into severe mind-warping territory.

Exhibit A: Salgam Suyu

(Sorry–there’s a little cedilla under the s, and also under a c farther down. I’ve taught myself a lot about code in a decade, but never mastered those special characters.)

Salgam suyu is a Turkish purple carrot drink. Apparently it’s fairly common at juice stands in certain parts of Turkey that I haven’t been to.

I think if I encountered it in a juice stand, I’d be pretty giddy and think it was cool.

But I saw it as a packaged product, in a grocery store–and that was even more mind-blowing. It’s like it proved it was a major part of the culture, not just some health nut’s invention.

Looking innocent on the grocery store shelf

“Is that a…carrot? That’s purple?” I said, squinting at the label. I flipped it around to look at the ingredients. Yup, purple carrot.

At the checkout, the lady looked unimpressed with it, like it was a totally normal thing. I guess, for her, it is. Which is the mind-blowing part.

It’s really beautiful stuff:

Looking lurid out on the street

By now, you’re probably wondering about the taste. The label said in capital letters BEST SERVED COLD.

But we had no fridge. We popped it open near the end of a long walk, standing on the top of a windy dyke at the edge of Edirne, with the massive Sinan mosque on the hill above us.

Peter gulped as I read out the ingredients: “Purple carrot, wheat, turnip, salt, red chili, pepper…”

“Huh. All those things really come through,” he said, scrunching up his face. “In that order.”

I took a swig. It was bracing. I wished it were cold. But for electrolyte replacement or whatever, and in lieu of food, it was pretty fantastic.

This product really made me rethink everything I knew about Turkey, Turkish food and Turks in general. Granted, I’m no expert to start with (the only Turkish I know is cok güzel, and I learned that from an Eartha Kitt song), but this made me realize there’s just so much I don’t know, there and nearly everywhere I go.

Like, what is the significance of this drink? Do grownups drink it? Do kids drink it? Does your mom tell you to drink it when you’re sick with something in particular? Do dudes drink it to feel studlier? Does it go with certain foods? Do you drink at night? In the morning? Is it old-fashioned? Or suddenly cool again? Is this a good brand? The only brand? Do people scoff at seeing it packaged at all?

I have no real answers, but I do see the word afrodizyak on the packager’s website. And, according to the ad, it makes you do backflips.

Each dish in every culture has all this resonance, but we barely begin to learn any of it when we travel. We can read up on some of the most famous dishes–it’s bachelor food, it’s court food, it’s imported-from-China-on-the-silk-road food… But a lot is just never even discussed, until someone thinks to ask.

It’s true for food, but it’s doubly true for drinks, because they’re almost always, by definition, a secondary thing.

Drinks also tend to be more personal, like breakfast–we have our routines, and we don’t want to mess them up (just think of your morning coffee).

And, more practically, travelers often shy away from water-based things for health reasons.

But one huge selling point about trying new drinks is: they’re cheap! Even if something’s disgusting and you’ll never put it in your mouth again, you only spent a couple bucks, max, on it. But you will have seen, for a gulp or two, a whole side of a culture you never knew before.

What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had to drink in another country?

Summer Break #2: Chicken of the Sea, Greek-Stylie

Peter and I were ambling down the boardwalk in Eressos, on some half-baked errand or other, when we saw…a bloodbath. Flashing knives. Bright-red gore.

At first, I thought Costa was butchering a sheep, right there on a restaurant table.

We got closer and saw that the carcass was, in fact, a tuna.

I’ve seen guys cutting up tunas at Hunts Point fish market in the Bronx, but that was a pretty tidy operation. This was a sloppier affair.

Just working on lunch

Costa had bought the whole fish directly from a random fisherman who’d caught it not far offshore. The guy was someone from another island, Costa said, where they’re experts at catching very big fish. (On Lesvos, they’re masters of sardines.)

He'd used a very, very big hook.

Costa had hired the strolling vendor, a Bangladeshi guy who normally walked along the beach, to help him cut it up. He’d put aside his stack of cheap fedoras and board of sunglasses, and was now up to his wrists in tuna meat. He looked pretty pleased.

An older woman was there collecting the scraps for her cat. “Do I need to cook it first?” she asked.

Costa laughed, in his husky way, through his beard. “No!” he declared, and sliced two chunks off the loins he was slicing up. He thrust them at us, to demonstrate.

When you look up 'raw' in the dictionary, this picture is there.

I’d like to say it was the most transcendant sushi ever, but it was almost too intense. Gamey. It reminded me a little of the whale we ate in Norway a decade ago, like they were from the same murky depths. Serious stuff–it tasted like you could live off one scrap for a week. But a cat would be delighted.

The crime scene

Check out those yellow bits in the photo above. Yup: yellowfin tuna. It never occurred to me that those words, which I’ve read only on can labels, meant something concrete, in real life. Somewhere out there in the sea is a fish with little blue bits on his fins too.

We left Costa to clean up. Remarkably, everyone else at the restaurant was placidly enjoying their lunches, not batting an eye. If they’d been butchering a sheep, of course, the tourists at least would’ve run off screaming. Why are fish so different?

Do they not bleed?

We returned that night. Two kilos of tuna, for our party of 12–we barely made a dent in the full 55 kilos the fish had weighed when hooked.

Grilled. Squeeze of lemon. Salt. Pepper. Cooked all the way through–none of that Asian-seared business.

It was perhaps the most amazing fish I’ve ever eaten. With heat, the gaminess dissipated. The fat oozed through the meat, which flaked.

I saw exactly what all that canned tuna was meant to be. And it sure ain’t chicken.

Summer Break #0.5: Lebanon Mountain Trail

I’m back from an internet vacation, and filing the next rash of posts under “Summer Break.” First, I was in Lebanon. I know it doesn’t look like work, but trust me, I’m writing a book! Later, we went to Greece and Turkey, where I wrote for a bit, and traipsed for a bit. More on that later.

Near the end of my six-week stint in Lebanon, Peter and I planned to hike a few legs of the Lebanon Mountain Trail, a 260-mile north-south route through about two-thirds of the country.

The LMT organization publishes a trail guide, with descriptions of the route (I picked this up in a Beirut bookshop) as well as a series of topo maps for every leg (these I had to buy direct from the LMT). They provide a list of guesthouses and campsites and guides along the route. It’s really very suavely packaged, and inspires confidence.

...the confidence you need to tackle very steep inclines. (All photos courtesy of Peter.)

But then there’s a line in the trail guide, last on a list of bullet points, after the one telling you it’s a good idea to hire a guide: “We walk this trail every year, and there are no land mines. But off the trail…well…”

Actually, that’s  paraphrasing, because I left my trail guide in Beirut. But you get the idea. I sure got the idea: If I were to wander off the trail, who knows what could happen? But I chose to squash down the fear of getting lost and losing my limbs and carry on. Squash, squash, squash.

Because Lebanon is crawling with hikers, all able-bodied, I figured the law of averages was on our side. But I figured it would be better to stick to better-traveled sections of trail, where the chance of getting lost was smaller. (Why didn’t we just hire a guide? you might ask. Well, Peter and I are skilled outdoorspeople who can read topo maps and a compass. But really: We’re introverts and really didn’t feel like chitchatting with a guide all day long.)

I also wanted the start and end points to be places that could be reached by public transport. But I wasn’t so self-sufficient that I wanted to carry camping gear.

The only section that satisfies all these needs–well-marked trail; guesthouses every night; accessible by bus–is legs 19, 20 and 21, between Barouk and Jezzine. A lot of it runs through the Chouf Cedar Reserve, for which there are additional, more current maps available (I picked these up at Antoine in Beirut). This gave me greater confidence in our decision not to hire a guide.

In fact, I got so cocky, I decided we should hike south to north, against the flow of the LMT guide, which describes the route north to south. This turned out to be the least of our worries.

Goats saying, "None shall pass!" on the other hand...that was a serious worry.

If you’re considering this hike, here are some details to know:

  • Hiking south to north is fine. The trail guide is not so detailed that it’s hard to follow the other way. And there were several points on the route (especially hiking down from the Prophet Ayoub shrine to Niha) where we were glad we were going the opposite direction.
  • On leg 21, hiking northbound, once you pass the mountain fort, be sure to stock up on water at the spring. Springs marked on the map farther along the trail were not actually springs–or we couldn’t find them. While you’re filling up your water bottles, consult your two maps–the LMT’s and the Chouf Reserve’s. See where they differ, and follow the Chouf Reserve’s. The LMT directs you through a canyon that is overgrown, and we couldn’t find the trail, and had to backtrack, cursing all the way.
  • The guesthouse in Niha is great. The owner lost his hands to land mines. It’s unsettling, especially if you get lost on the way there, as we did (but you won’t, because you will have followed my advice above). He also works in the reserve cabin by the mountain fort, which you’ll pass on the way from Jezzine. This is convenient, if you’ve neglected to make reservations.
    • Breakfast at the guesthouse in Niha
  • From the Prophet Ayoub shrine down to Niha, there is indeed a trail, as the map suggests, though it’s not well marked at the top, and if you ask anyone, they’ll probably tell you it’s not there. It’s not super well maintained. But it is passable. Just head down through the picnic grounds and keep an eye out for trail blazes.
  • Leaving Niha and heading north, the maps are contradictory, and the trail description isn’t clear. If you head back to where the shrine trail dumped you the day before, don’t cross the river, and at the first opportunity, scramble uphill a short distance to get to a trail running along the irrigation ditch you can see just up the hillside. Leave early in the day–once the trail heads uphill again, away from the irrigation ditch, it’s pretty grueling.
  • We got lost in the last stretch before Maasser ech-Chouf, after Mristi. But we didn’t even realize it because we had convinced ourselves we were following trail blazes, but later realized they were no-trespassing or private-property symbols. The route we went wasn’t terrible, as it’s mostly through fields, and nothing overgrown. There’s another agricultural road a man in Mristi told us about, that goes from near the gas station on the far, far edge of town. Who knows where the real trail is. (Oh, yeah–a professional guide does.)
    • Terraced fields outside of Jezzine
  • The guesthouse in Maasser ech-Chouf is really lovely. The man who runs the shop and restaurant on the plaza is a smooth operator, and he’ll bring you more food than you order, and charge you for it all. But it’s good food, and it’s not expensive, and he’ll probably throw in invigorating herbal concoctions and coffee and sweets and funny hats to wear. Just think of it more as an all-you-can-eat-for-$15 place, rather than an a la carte restaurant.
  • The trail north out of Maasser ech-Chouf (ie, south end of leg 19) is…I don’t know. Let’s just say not well marked. This is the one point where we definitely would’ve been happier with a guide. But we were so bent on leaving before the sun got hot that we didn’t want to wait for the guide to get into the office. We wound up scrabbling up a really steep mountainside and flopping out on the road, and having to hitch a ride to the Cedar Reserve entrance. It wasn’t pretty.
    • Peter's battle wounds from clambering up the hill. Also: holes in both our pants.
  • There are no springs between Maasser ech-Chouf and Barouk. But the trail, after the uphill out of Maasser, isn’t strenous, and partially shaded. Plan accordingly.
  • There are 800 vicious varieties of thistles in Lebanon. Plan accordingly, with thick socks or long pants.
  • The guesthouse in Barouk needs to be booked at least two days in advance, said the owner on the phone, and it was so empty we were suspicious it’s ever open. Humph. But then we hopped a bus to Beiteddine, and walked to Deir al-Qamar, and finally found a hotel that wasn’t exorbitant. (But, it should be said, the owner was a bit appalled at our sweaty appearance–out of context of the hiking trail, we did look like filthy vagrants, by Lebanese uber-grooming standards. Keep this in mind if you plan extensive backpacking.)

Did I mention land mines too much and scare you? I’m sorry–that shouldn’t have happened. The trail is land-mine-free!

Just focus on the idyllic parts...which were pretty idyllic.

I loved hiking in Lebanon–we met nice people and saw millennia-old trees. I’d go back and do it again–I’d love to do some of the more northern legs especially. The Chouf is interesting terrain, and a nice mix of wild territory and farms.

And the efforts of the Lebanon Mountain Trail crew are admirable–it’s an excellent project, and I hope to take part in it again soon.

Dissenting Opinion: Beirut Is Not Cool

Beirut is cool! If you’ve picked up a travel magazine once in the last decade, you’ve probably read this at least once. Beirut has been the international equivalent of Portland, Ore., a subject of travel editors’ endless fascination.

After six weeks there, I appear to be the only person who thinks the opposite, and I’ve had a hard time writing this post to say so. (And I like Portland!) I don’t blame Beirut, I don’t think–I blame the hype.

I went to Beirut in 1999, and it was a haphazard mess of terrible infrastructure and jerks in armored Mercedes. According to the papers, though, Beirut’s come a long way, baby!

Cool kids in the Place d'Etoile in the rebuilt downtown

Guess what? Beirut is still a mess. Ostentatious wealth still rules, and people have to haul water–not like in rural Africa, but anyway, in 5-gallon jugs up stairs because the power is out so the elevator isn’t running.

Added misfortunes since ’99: the internet is some of the slowest (and most expensive) in the world, and crude plastic surgery has become wildly popular among a certain set. (Women look startled, strained, flotational–if you don’t want to feel like you’re having an acid flashback, don’t go anywhere near a mall!)

Sure, it would be a buzzkill to mention these details in a “Beirut nightlife is sizzling hot!” story. But it’s slightly disingenuous to ignore them altogether. All of these things (except the plastic surgery–not sure what that’s about) are indicators of a much more troubling reality, and the simple fact that Beirut is still scarred by war–and so are Beirutis.

This is not a “cool” city mainly because Beirutis do not keep their cool. They are, to generalize wildly, jumpy and aggressive and filled with road rage, and the instant there’s bad news, they retreat to their apartments with a week’s worth of food.

Beirut cool...in shades of pink

I completely understand why this is, and I would probably be pessimistic and anxious if I lived there too. But as a visitor, you have to be willfully blind to ignore the harsh truth behind the art-book stores, the Gemmayzeh pubs with their reggae-Gypsy-funk-Oriental DJs, and the massive, glittering malls.

That truth is: it takes a long time to get over the trauma of war, and it won’t be happening anytime soon in Lebanon.

Most travel stories nod to the various wars, to heighten the drama of the phoenix-like rise of the capital: “Beirutis, scarred by decades of war…”; “Beirut, once marred by civil war…” etc etc. But the implication is that’s all done–Beirutis are back to boozing and beach-lounging, and it’s all good. The checkered past just gives a little frisson to the decadent present–all the bullet holes add cachet.

But Lebanon’s 1991 Amnesty Law let the perpetrators of civil-war horrors slide back into society, even politics. Lebanon has not signed on to the international Mine Ban Treaty. And any peace in Lebanon is precarious with Syria next door, not to mention Israel–and Hizbullah’s unending “resistance” to it.

I’m not complaining about the poor infrastructure and the bad drivers per se–that I can handle. I have a harder time with partying in the face of obvious psychological trauma. I had a similar reaction to New Orleans after Katrina–a wonderful and interesting place to visit, but it’s wrong to pretend the city is “back” and hopping when a stranger on a streetcorner will, unprompted, in a shaking voice, tell you how he lost his home.

Beirut balconies, each a little theater

Beirut does actually have all the charms touted in the travel stories. It’s small, so you can crash the “scene” in a week. You’re on the Mediterranean, which is lovely. Women dress in every possible way. (Though cleavage is often deployed in the same aggressive way as the plastic surgery–ow, my eyes!) Its place on the International Hipster Circuit is established thanks to cool bars, good coffee, contemporary art and a visible gay scene.

Beirut is cosmopolitan in a way that most of the rest of the region is not. First-time visitors to the Middle East are usually happy to find the place and people so relatable, which is no small thing.

What do you think? Is it dishonest to push one aspect of tourism to a troubled place, and ignore the trouble? Is it helpful to normalize a place by touting it as a hot destination? Have you had a similar experience in another destination? Do you love Beirut because or in spite of it all? Am I cynical grump who should just shut up and go surfing in Liberia?

Obamanos!

I did a super-quickie trip to ABQ this weekend, which happened to coincide with an Obama rally. Crowd estimates were about 45,000, and I think I walked past every one of those people just trying to find the end of the line to stand in. After about 10 minutes at the end of the 1.2-mile-long line (not kidding! See Google map), we decided to hoof it back up to the field, and try to listen from across the street. At a certain point, everyone there on the outskirts just politely rushed the field.

Read more

Love Bites

Back in mid-2006 I complained about getting screwed out of a trip to Amsterdam and missing out on Thorwald Voss’s Love Krokets.

Since then, I’ve been in touch with the Grand Master himself, Chef Thor, or Chef Kroket, as he is more commonly known.

This morning he emailed me to say that he has abandoned the Love Kroket (curses! I never tried it–and neither did you, I bet; read more about them here) in favor of a more streamlined fried-food experience: gourmet bitterballen.

If krokets are doughnuts, bitterballen are the doughnut holes–handy and bite-size, and so small that you wind up eating a larger quantity of fried crispy goodness than you would if you stared down just one kroket. Also, bitterballen have a better fried-surface-area-to-inner-goo ratio.

Thor is calling his new bitterballen Love Bites. Naturally. Read all about them here. For those of you who don’t read Dutch, just know that Thor has been working on these delicious little beauties (all vegetarian, btw) for seven years, and they currently come in three flavors: Popeye, a combo of spinach and gorgonzola; Coco Thai, a spicy coconut curry job that is, incidentally, baked, not fried; and Torri Jappi, a teriyaki approach, with mango and ginger.

I cannot wait to let the Love Bites rock my world this summer!

In the meantime, I’m wondering… If Thor was going by the moniker Chef Kroket, what will he be called now that he’s focusing on a new fried snack? Chef Balls? I hope so!

[Here’s my report on meeting Chef Thor, a few months later…]

Back to France: the andouillette and me

Working my way backward through meals eaten, I’ll mention our sojourn in France first. After stuffing ourselves with amazingly good raspberries and peaches, as well as cheese fondue, in Geneva, we departed for Lyon with our college friend Chris and her family.

Seeing how our first visit to France on this trip was accidental, yet still yielded tasty food at the buffet of the stranded-air-travelers hotel, and this time we were visiting the real gastronomic heart of France on purpose, I had high hopes. The trip was also on short notice, so I quickly culled restaurant recommendations and names of local must-try dishes from reputable Internet sources like eGullet, as well as from the slimmest of French acquaintances.

The first night we headed out to the nearest recommendation to our hotel, La Machonnerie. It was August 1, so that very morning, apparently, the Vacation Rapture had happened. Vieux Lyon was empty, and so was the restaurant, except for an older couple with their dog.

When I expressed interest in trying the most traditional items, the friendly chef/host began to sell me in French, and I gave up trying to translate, and just put my faith in him. Chris leaned over and murmured, “That’s brains, you know.” What the heck–I’ve got nothing against brains, and if I’m going to eat them, I may as well eat them in France, right? I nodded and smiled at the chef.

As we neared the main course, anticipation–and jokes–were mounting at the table. Juan had gotten the hard sell on the tablier de sapeur, some special preparation of tripe. Fellow eaters who’d ordered based on what sounded good, rather than Lyon reputation, got their duck breasts and sausages and lentils. Juan’s plate arrived, looking like an innocuous bit of, essentially, tripe schnitzel. Finally my dish came, last, with great fanfare, ladled like a big cauliflower out of a cast iron pot of steaming broth. A beady-eyed crawdad sat next to it, egging me on with its little claws.

I was grossly full from my previous course of fried pig foot (the fat goes great on bread!). But I dug into my dish, surprised by the texture, and slightly puzzled by the crayfish broth, which didn’t seem like the most logical companion for veal brains. I managed to eat about half of my weird white orb, and then sat back, sweating, while everyone else chowed down on succulent duck breast, sausages, and incredibly savory lentils.

The next day, when we were in Les Halles, which had also experienced the Vacation Rapture, the one food shop that was open was selling shrink-wrapped quenelles, which is what I’d had the night before. They looked nothing like brains, and in fact seemed to contain some sort of seafood. And then right next to it was a big tub of the local specialty cervelles de canut, which is some cheese thing that I knew meant, literally, “silk-weaver’s brains.”

Oh. Duh. Cervelles. Quenelles. I’d spent a whole dinner thinking I was eating some exotic bit of animal, and really I was just hacking away at a giant fish dumpling.

So the next night, we go to another neighborhood joint. I’d read somewhere that Chez Bobosse was a reputable local producer of a Lyonnaise specialty called andouillette, so when I saw that on the menu, the choice was clear. Some kind of artisanal sausage would be just the antidote for my brain/not-brain experience from the night before.

Again, my plate arrives last. It’s a sizzling cast-iron gratin dish, about one-quarter occupied by a stubby little sausage-like form bathed in a mustard sauce. And it smells exactly like the Metro station we just walked past to get to the restaurant. Which is to say: like pee.

I can’t remember the last time I was simply unable to eat something. Out of politeness and general optimism, I will try whatever is placed in front of me. And I gamely tried my andouillette, despite its toxic smell. Even swathed in huge lashings of mustard sauce, it tasted like pee–or what I would imagine pee to taste like.

And it was a rather odd sausage: its filling was not ground up, but more just long shreds of things loosely gathered together in a casing that was quite stretchy and gummy. It was a uniform grayish color. Even after I managed to choke down about half of it, its evil smell continued to waft up, and I had to gulp my wine to counteract it. I walked home feeling exceptionally nasty.

The next day I stuck to recognizable pastries and sandwiches, and the day after that, I looked andouillette up online. Turns out it’s all pig intestine: chitlins wrapped up in more chitlins.

I just had no idea the French could do me so wrong. I know the French eat a lot of odd parts of animals, and I respect that. But I just assumed they know what they’re doing, and actually make those odd parts delicious.

In fact, though, I now see that even French cuisine includes things that fall under the category of “acquired taste.” All those people on eGullet who were gushing about andouillette must either have been fed the stuff from birth, or are really just huge Francophile posers who lord their tolerance of obscure foods over those with allegedly more pedestrian tastes. What I can’t understand is why I would ever cultivate a taste for something that makes me think of a subway tunnel on a hot day.

I was just about to compare these hook-line-and-sinker Franco-freaks to those people who speak rapturously about how phenomenal sea urchin is. But then I remembered I had some really amazing sea urchins in Greece–and that’s a separate story.

Air Chance

Peter and I are in Greece. Finally. When I booked our tix on Air France, I blithely made the “Air Chance” joke, completely forgetting that I had gotten screwed by them before. Instead, all I remembered was really good coffee, wine and buttery biscuits.

But then I had plenty of time to recall my previous mishap, after a couple of hours into our “flight.” I use the quotes because in fact, around 9:30pm, we had not gone anywhere, not even pulled away from the gate at JFK. Due to alleged “congestion” and then a thunderstorm, we didn’t leave for another four hours, which more than doubled our time in our plane seat. Luckily, we had been given earplugs and eye shades (I carry them anyway, but it was a nice gesture), and we had back-of-seat movies. And there was none of that tedious turbulence one gets when one actually travels through the air. And the wine was OK. Also, the captain was almost comically dismayed every time he came on the PA, and would always heave a huge sigh after saying, “Je suis tres desole, mais….”

So we got to Paris, eventually, and AF had the decency to put us up in a hotel and give us meal vouchers. And being stuck in Paris is not the worst thing that could happen. Peter and I had great ambitions about zipping into the city for dinner, and sent a text message to Tamara asking for advice, but when she hadn’t replied, it was about time for the free hotel dinner, so we thought we’d at least check it out.

Three plates of terrine, camembert, shrimp, sea snails, white anchovies, curried pickled veggies, rare slabs of beef and artichoke hearts later, we guessed we weren’t really up to another dinner. As Peter said, “If we were in the States, our room would be bigger and our dinner would be a hell of a lot crappier.” He also said he’d be perfectly happy to eat cheese, surrender and act like a monkey, or something along those lines.

After accidentally gorging ourselves, Peter and I zipped into the city and had a few drinks at a bar recommended by our friend Rod, via text message from Amsterdam. Savvy. Peter and I sat in the grotto-y basement of Chez Georges marveling at how people (just pairs of people, in fact) were ordering whole bottles of wine in a bar. I didn’t realize until I saw it that nobody does this in the US. Is there some law against it?

And then the next day, Air France once again managed to brainwash me, just by feeding me well. As I ate my cold roast beef, vinegar-y lentils, and ratatouille, and swabbed fluffy white cheese on my bread, all my rage over the previous day’s flight just evaporated. And I wasn’t even drinking wine this time.

Everyone who cares about food seems to have had a revelatory experience in France, but it’s usually out in the countryside, at the market, or along the coast fishing oysters out of the water or some bucolic crap like that. I’m here to tell you that French food is remarkable even at the level of cheap-hotel-by-the-airport-buffet. I mean, I could easily come back and plan a Sunday night dinner inspired by what I ate at the Hotel Campanile in Roissy–which sounds glamorous but isn’t at all. Comparing it to the States, it really makes me want to cry. How have we set the bar for food so damn low?