This is totally brilliant! Thank god it’s animated–no french fries died in the making.
I like how the falafel is a suicide bomber. Genius. Although…are those sausages supposed to be Austria? Those are definitely not Vienna sausages. But thank god for that too. I think I might throw up if I saw chunks of Vienna sausage, animated or no.
I put the “Spanish Word a Day” gadget on my Google home page. But that’s not how I learned my nickname in Spanish.
When I was in Merida, I saw this restaurant with an exceedingly cute logo. Its name is La Cochinita Tuerta. I didn’t know what Tuerta meant, so I just looked it up.
It means one-eyed. Ha. I thought the cute little pig in the tutu was just winking at me.
Also funny: when I googled “cochinita tuerta”, all I got was a guy complaining about what an awful name for a restaurant this is, and what, are they just making fun of people with one bad eye?
I don’t take it personally. As long as the food’s good… And even better, maybe I’ll get a discount if I march in and say, “Yo soy una cochinita tuerta!”
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…]
Years ago, Tal (aka The Idea Man) and I were sitting around at a cafe, I think. We were drinking our hot drinks, and Tal said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if someone made little individual honey capsules to dissolve in tea?”
Lo. The dream is realized! Not by Tal, but he’s the one who sent me the link to Honibe Honey Drops, a clever new product from our neighbors to the frozen north.
Tal’s original vision (as I remember it, anyway) involved a gelatin-capsule sort of coating around a portion of honey, whereas this Honibe business looks like it’s solid all the way through. Either way, though, a good idea. Also, I like the lemon-honey option from Honibe.
…All this reminds me, incidentally, of a photo I didn’t get to take in Mexico, of the logo for Mielitron, a honey-processing company. As the name suggests, it’s a very high-tech operation, and the logo is this groovy robot bee. I imagine it rampaging over the countryside, large as Godzilla, growling, “I am Mielitrrrrrrrrrrooon!” And drowning whole villages in honey….
Sent to me by Jen, brilliant archivist at the St. Louis arch (friends in high places!): On the aptly named Not Martha website, instructions for making bacon cups.
I especially appreciate an effort in which the author has to say her kitchen filled with smoke, there were open grease fires and it took three hours–AND it was totally worth it, and everyone should try it. Danger is welcome!
Every time I read anything about Alice Waters and how much she relishes local, adorable, fresh-garden-soil-strewn, covered-in-a-hand-knitted-cozy produce, I want to fucking strangle her.
One perfect peach for dessert? Thanks for the tip, lady.
Your little pig that you fed on nothing but green garlic shoots, and then when you ate it, it tasted like garlic? Well, isn’t that niiiice.
But I live in the real world, not California, and transforming supermarket food into something tasty for dinner takes more than slicing it in half and putting it on a plate and garnishing it with fairy dust.
But then…then I actually read a nice interview with the nice lady. She’s pretty freakin’ infectious. I agree with her 100 percent when she says food should be the No. 1 issue in the presidential race. And of course Edible Schoolyard is what we need more of.
Here’s the link: Go Ask Alice (on Slate.com).
Oh, to be in Californ-I-A. I ate some kale tonight. Does that count?
Back in Astoria, alhamdulillah. Back in the US, meh. After eating all kinds of fresh tastiness in Mexico, I’m reminded of the idiocy of US farm subsidies by an op-ed in the New York Times: “My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables),” in which a Minnesota vegetable farmer relates how he actually had to pay fines for growing produce, rather than commodity crops like corn and rice. How can American government praise free markets everywhere but on the country’s own farmland? File with a similar question re: democracy. Grump, grump, grump.
In good news, however, I ate at Philoxenia last night–the reincarnated Philoxenia. The old one was up on 23rd Avenue, and it felt like eating in someone’s living room. One night I dug into a big plate of the heartiest kind of pork stew with hints of orange and cinnamon, the kind of thing you’d normally only get in someone’s house, while a table of 20 people celebrated a birthday. I thought the party was winding down when an older woman got up and put on her floor-length fur coat–but then she went on to sing and dance for the whole crowd.
Well, it turns out Philoxenia maybe was in someone’s living room–there were some permit issues, I heard. Now it’s all legit, and settled into my dream restaurant space on 34th Avenue, near 33rd Street. In the years when I was considering opening a cafe, that space seemed ideal, quiet but on a well-walked block–with an apartment above, even. It has been host to a couple of Mexican restaurants, and an excellent Peruvian bar. The whole time, the back room has been weird and shadowy and not very well used.
The Philoxenia team has opened up that back room and done it up like…a living room. Complete with a rocking chair sitting by the gas fireplace in the back. Totally adorable, and a good choice, considering it’s a pretty big space that in the wrong hands could feel a bit catering hall-y.
The menu, at first glance, looks pretty spare. Some salads, some mezze. Grilled fish. Lamb chops. If you don’t know what you’re hankering for, it might seem a little uninspiring. Fortunately, we were starving, and we also knew from our experiences in the old place that we were in good hands. We ordered a pikilia–a little mix of the spready mezze, the sort of thing where there’s always one clunker. But no–excellent fresh-and-garlicky tzatziki (up there with Kyklades’), really solid eggplant salad with a nice vinegary bite but still smooth, and good feta spread and mellow taramosalata. And we got a super-charred octopus tentacle–also nice and vinegary.
Then we moved in on the specials: avgolemono soup, ideal for my vague feeling of maybe a cold coming on, plus a main dish of rooster with pasta. How can I explain how good this was? Liberal use of chicken fat (the skin was still on) in the tomato sauce gave this an amazingly soft mouth-feel, and the cinnamon was so delicate and also soft. Perfect winter food.
To lighten up, we also had a grilled dorado, and a side of dandelion greens. Those greens were especially nice–not overcooked, good texture. I could feel the vitamins and minerals coursing through my veins.
Oh, and of course we had some french fries with cheese and oregano, and a Greek salad, a virtual bucketful. All that food fed four of us more than generously, and we didn’t even have a chance to try any of the other mezze. When we couldn’t face dessert or coffee, our waiter brought us all little tiny glasses of really nice dessert wine, which hit the spot. Total bill was just $100. Reminded me of the good old days of Astoria dining. More realistically, I guess that’s what happens when you don’t drink much, for a change–we had just a half-liter of very drinkable house red.
I went away feeling like I’d had a home-cooked meal, which is a rare and wonderful thing. The living room may be bigger, but I felt just as at home.
Yo heart Astoria mas que nunca!
Driving through Chiapas I fully realized how dull traveling by car is. Here, where you can rent a car for about US$15 a day and gas is about 70 cents a liter, and that car gets 40 miles to the gallon, it’s hard to argue for taking the bus, especially when you’re more than one person.
But driving takes all the sense of accomplishment out of your day. I was envious of the guy who rolled up at Frontera Corazal and wound up sharing a boat with us to to the ruins of Yaxchilan. He’d planned all the previous day, to get on the combi at the right time, and then to negotiate with the cabbie who drove him the 15km down from the highway. All along, the jungle got denser, the road got worse, the animals along the side of the road got bolder. He got to sit back and soak it all in. More important, though, by taking public transport, he gave up control, which makes it an actual adventure.
By car–ho hum. The road got worse–I chose to drive a little more slowly, whereas the combi driver probably didn’t. It got hot–I gave up my aspirations of keeping it real and turned on the a/c. I arrived cool yet stultified.
But single backpacker dude probably spent the morning dozing on and off, waking up occasionally to see the jungle suddenly thick (whereas I just saw it get gradually denser–not so remarkable). Or maybe he spent the morning having random, stilted conversations with the other people in the combi–tiring, but memorable. He’s been thinking, This is how people really get around in this country.
I was just staring at the road ahead of me, and occasionally checking the map. I was keenly aware that people do not normally get around in an air-conditioned PT Cruiser.
It all just confirms my suspicion that cars suck, and suck the life out of you. I would really love to come back here and actually have time to travel on buses and combis, and wait randomly by the side of the road for hours, and just give up all the responsibility that driving entails.
You’re probably thinking, Silly girl–two minutes of public transport and she’ll be totally eating her words. But no–I have done this, for a week, the one research trip I fucked up and forgot to get my driver’s license renewed. I still think fondly of my weird series of buses and taxis, of the combi I got on where everyone carried a machete, and driver was goggle-eyed to see me. Of bouncing around in the back of taxis, on my way to ruins that no one ever visits. Of popping off the bus at a transfer point and eating incredible snacks from the vendors there.
Next time, next time…
So, my phone now speaks better Spanish than I do: I popped in a Mexican SIM card, and all the menus switched over: mensajes, adreses, you name it. Why can’t I do that with my brain?
I contemplate this from my little beachfront prison where I’m not speaking Spanish at all: I’ve been in writing lockdown here in Cancun for these last few days. I’ve always imagined doing this–a little beach time, a lot of writing–but it never works out. I’ve told this plan to people I know in Puerto Morelos so many times–and not followed through–that it’s a little embarrassing. Oh well–if I were in PM, I’d be eating my fool head off all day long and never getting anything done. Through the miracle of Hotwire, I am staying in a relatively posh hotel that is populated with so many large, sunburnt Americans that I really am not tempted to spend all day by the pool. And if I want to eat, I have to walk at least a kilometer. (Mmm–good tortas yesterday, though, overlooking the lagoon! Spongy lunchmeat never tasted so good, slathered with mayo and habanero salsa!)
Yesterday I did venture out for a morning swim (all you Cancun haters: you clearly have never been in the water–it’s unreal, and shark-free!), then retreated to my shady hotel room for the rest of the day. The maids must think I’m violently ill or on a drug binge, as I don’t even let them in to tidy up or replace the towels.
I went out at night to see a movie–the first time I’ve gone to the movies in Mexico, I realized, because I usually don’t have the time. I like to go to movies everywhere, just to see what you can get at the snack bar–here, nothing special, but at least popcorn is called palomitas (“little doves”). I saw a film called Stellet Licht, made by a Mexican director but set in a Mennonite community in north Mexico, in Chihuahua. After I got over the idea that maybe I could understand the Plautdietsch, which sounds enough like Dutch to fool me, I managed with just the Spanish subtitles OK. It helped that those Mennonites are a terse bunch. There were 10-minute stretches where no one said anything, so I had plenty of time mull over the incredibly basic sentence I’d just read at the bottom of the screen, and finally go “Ohhhh.” There were only about 12 people in the theatre: me and a huge whole family, including great-aunts and grandmas. When they left, they were all laughing because most of them had just fallen asleep.
What else has happened? I’ve fully recovered from my little “moment” in Merida. B got off OK and is home in ABQ now. I’ve seen a few more clowns. They’re just a regular part of the street fabric here, like the raving drunk guy and the impossibly small 90-year-old woman and the guy walking by with mangos on a tray balanced on his head. No one bats an eye. The buses are still filled with roving accordion and guitar players.
My last night in Merida, I ran out to check a few last-minute things. I was hightailing it back to the hotel when a guy in a doorway said hello to me. Then he asked if I spoke English. I slowed down my walk and reluctantly said yes. Next thing I know, he’s asking me to translate a poem he’s trying to read, about a Japanese guy giving an anti-nuclear speech in 1957. I have to explain that yes, it says the flowers are smiling, and that’s weird, but it’s poetry, right? After 10 excruciating moments, and me gesticulating more than talking, he lets me go. I think I believe him about only needing help with the first two stanzas.
This morning I walked up the beach to this little coffee place attached to a mall (everything’s attached to a mall here). I vaguely remembered having a nice breakfast there in November. Halfway into my latte and my obligatory cream-cheese-filled pan dulce, my waiter says, “You were here before, weren’t you?” Either they get no customers, or I was much chattier then than I recall. He remembered my whole story–guidebook-writing, etc. Extremely sweet. Especially since he didn’t charge me for my pastries in the end. Aw. Later, walking down the beach and replaying the conversation we’d had in Spanish, I realized I’d answered half his comments/questions wrong. Oh, _he_ would like to speak more languages! Whaddya know–it’s not all about me.
So I’ll be sad to leave, especially as this marks the beginning of a long lull in the update cycle for the Mexico books. I won’t have reason to come back here until late 2009, and by then my cookbook project with Tamara (which is a go, I have not mentioned!) will be out, and who knows what that will bring?
That thing I said about never being sick in Mexico? Whoa.
Try instead eating a lovely meal at someone’s house (home-cooked food: what a relief, after two weeks on the road). Then you get to the last bite and realize something is Terribly Wrong. You make a break for the bathroom (“Cairo, I’d love to tell you about Cairo! But first, I really, really have to use the bathroom!” I said with all seriousness and calm). But instead you start to black out just about the time you get halfway there–the fridge is the last thing you see, and you put in an extra sprint toward the bathroom door in hopes of getting there on auto-pilot.
You come to, after what feels like the most restful dream-filled full-night’s sleep but was really about 20 seconds, slumped in the bathroom doorway and covered in your dinner, in many forms.
That hasn’t happened to me since I was a kid.
Anyway, to be fair, the kind of sick I got was really not Mexico’s fault. It was completely mine, for stomping around in the noonday sun, with no lunch and only the merest suggestion of Gatorade. I hadn’t been eating because my gut had not been flawless (OK, that’s sort of Mexico’s fault), and I just didn’t want to eat another taco. I was holding out for this delicious homey meal that night. And ooh, baby–I got to enjoy it coming and going!
I have gotten this same kind of sick once before, not in the third world, but in NYC, after tromping around in the noonday sun in the summer, stupidly wearing corduroy pants and drinking nothing but beer. By sundown, after arriving at another long-awaited home-cooked dinner, I had a sip of a gin-and-tonic and promptly yakked. I spent the rest of the night in a darkened bedroom, moaning, occasionally dragging myself out to vomit as quietly as possible, so as not to disturb the dinner party that continued on without me.
Some people might think this last point is demented, but I think it’s essential. The Dinner Party Must Go On! The last thing a sick person wants is for everything to grind to a halt while everyone crowds around and looks on in shock and pity, and then quickly says their goodbyes.
And to my impeccable hosts’ credit last night, they did carry on. Presto, my utterly soiled clothes were in the laundry (what luck! I’d spilled eggplant on my skirt earlier in the night–no need to worry about those oil stains!). I was led to the shower, and given a whole new, cute outfit to wear and an open invitation to all the assorted lotions and products. Then I came downstairs and drank some tea. I went on to vomit a couple more times (demented again, but I actually don’t mind this at all–good thing I like my body, or I would be a class A bulimic), while the lovely lady of the house served my mother dessert.
I got driven home in an air-conditioned car, the non-bumpy route, with bags of assorted things to get me through the night and assurances that a doctor could be summoned if need be. This morning I feel fantastic, and I even ate a teeny bit of the cake from last night.
Now that is true hospitality, and that is why these flawless hosts also run one of the finest B&Bs in Merida.
I’m sorry I had to get so violently ill just to test them, but hey, I’m just doing my job, you know?