Category Archives: Snacks

I tried….and maybe it tasted good.

Eating your way through England: Bath

13 Friday Jul 2012

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Ian and I are champion eaters.  In fact, its recently occurred to me that I’m really going to have to step up my fitness regimen if we’re going to continue to travel like this – the trips we’ve taken recently have included Valencia (restaurant week!), Brussels (moules frites!) and Bath (just….food.  so much food.)  And we’re not exactly abstemious in our day-to-day life, either.

Anyway.  With the exception of a disappointing Thai meal (and it was still Thai food, so how wrong can you go?), we ate phenomenally well.  We went to Gascoyne Place, a gastro-pub, for an early meal before the Theatre Royal Bath (apparently its a big deal.  We saw School For Scandal.  It was pretty good).  Then we went on a mini-bar crawl – we went to The Raven, a pub we liked so much that we went back for lunch, and to the Canary Wine & Gin Bar.

The food highlight of the weekend was The Circus, a tiny, unassuming little cafe (it turned out to have a huge downstairs – way less tiny that I thought) with amazing food.  I had grilled peppers, peaches and chorizo with rocket salad, and Ian and I split an heirloom tomato salad.  I was ready to just set up camp in the corner and stay forever.

Still to come: the tourist attractions! The Roman Baths and the Jane Austen tour.

Valenciano Snacks

09 Monday Jul 2012

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Sometimes you get really lucky, and you turn up in a city having done absolutely no research and strike holiday paydirt.  For me, that happened in Valencia. In fact, though, much of my enthusiasm can be summed up in two words: Restaurant Week.  My Friend Robert pointed out that there are lots of drawbacks to Restaurant Week, but for me it means lots of really good food pretty much every night.  We got particularly lucky the last night, when eight of us went to a place near Plaza de la Virgen (so near that I would have been skeptical, on my own).  We had two vegetarians and one man who asked for no garlic.  I mean seriously.  And even so, we had a delicious meal; the highlight was foie yogurt.  I don’t know what it was (besides some combo of foie gras and yogurt) but it tasted amazing.  It was the definition of delicious.

I had been holding out on reporting on the food because other people meticulously chronicled what we ate, and I had hoped to con them into guest blogging or, at the very least, sending me their photos (you know who you are).

So that may still happen.  But the food (and experiences relating to food) were amazing even if you discount the meals – cherries in a square behind the central market, mojitos in the shade on a sweltering afternoon, an ice cream shop where I got so many free samples I was full by the time I ordered, and lattes and campari spritzes in a leafy cafe run by two old ladies with a puppy who stood on its back legs when patrons entered, tucked into a tiny square square on the edge of the Barrio del Carmen .

The snacks were amazing.  Above: orange ice cream served in an orange skin, purchased for 60 eurocents at a grocery next to our hotel; fardons and horchata at a famous horcheteria (seriously, that’s a thing); and a sticky meringue at the central market (sadly, my photographs of the market are terrible).

Late Night Food, Oxbridge Style

25 Monday Jun 2012

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Every place has its standard late night food.  In college, my partner and his friends always ate at a particular Wendy’s when he got all snacky late at night, and in grad school his housemate would make a signature bean dip.  In Chicago, tacos are the late night/early morning snack of choice.  In Albany, there’s a burrito place with killer sweet potato fries, and in Cambridge, Mass, every serious night on the town ends at Hi Fi Pizza & Subs, which is disgusting but always open when you want it to be.

Cambridge and Oxford have a shared signature late night food, and last night I ate it for the first time since 2004.  Its best when purchased from a truck, but the Mega Meals on Grafton St. will work in a pinch.  You get fries in a really toxic styrofoam container, sprinkled with shredded mystery white cheese.  You slam the top of the container shut for a few minutes, during which time the cheese melts and forms a sloppy and delicious crust across the top of the fries.  And then you enjoy.

Chips & cheese aren’t just an Oxbridge thing, but I imagine that, with all the students, its a lot easier to come by in university towns.  And while non-UK readers might be tempted to suggest that cheese and chips is no different from cheese fries, they would be wrong.  Chips and cheese is a ritual as much as a food, and the consistency of the final product isn’t the same as what you get when you order cheese fries in the states.

Most of my favorite foods from study abroad have really held up to scrutiny: Pimms, digestive biscuits, and Smarties are all about as good as I remember.  But cheesy chips really deliver when you’re hungry at midnight, the way almost nothing else can.

I Still Live in a Foreign Country

11 Monday Jun 2012

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So I’m back from Valencia.  The internet in the hotel was beyond awful, and the hotel room looked like a worn-down version of the Hilton that Betty and Don Draper stayed in when they went to Rome in season 2 (that’s 1961, y’all).

That said, the weather was sunny and warm every day and Ian and I had adventures all over the city when I wasn’t busy having adventures with my friend Robert (also a conference partner) or by myself.

Then we came back to England, and as glad as I was to be back, there are certain things that I find difficult.  For starters: WHY IS IT ALWAYS RAINING IN THIS EFFING COUNTRY?????

And let me tell you, it is doing something way more substantial than “misting” at the moment.  If you need a Celsius-Fahrenheit translation: 10 C is about 52 degrees F. It’s mid-June, and I am sick of this shit.  The temperature has barely cracked 70 in 2012.

While I have my frustrations with England, I am surprised by what now seems normal. Ian and I met up for drinks with a new intern at his office yesterday (she’s a friend of a friend) and we talked at her for hours about all the things she’d need to know and all the things that had gone hilariously awry when we moved.  But on several occasions she said “I just love how…” or “I can’t believe how…” and I just kind of blinked at her.  Of course the pubs close early – that’s how pubs work.  Of course there are no gridded streets.  Of course the weather is cold and rainy (I have to say, that last one is the only one that really floored me.  She didn’t bring a coat or waterproof clothing.  The most cursory check of weather.com would have cleared that up for her).

What was even more startling to realise is that I had a similar conversation with English people at a pub recently – they were talking about their wacky experiences in the states (“you can’t buy electric kettles everywhere! they all have clothes dryers! they’re so nice!”) and while I was curious to hear it, I couldn’t come up with rejoinders until later (“you eat mushy peas and use date sauce instead of ketchup, for fuckssake”).  Most of England just seems normal, or normal-ish, to me now, and I have to give it some thought to come up with things that I think (or thought) were strange when I moved here last autumn.

Big Night in the Big City

28 Monday May 2012

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A few weeks ago, I had what for me amounted to an epic night out in London.  It began at 5:30 in the evening and ended roughly 11 hours later, as the sun was juuuust beginning to rise over Hampstead.

The night began near the American Embassy, where my friend Erin and I grabbed some tapas and then rendez-vous’d with embassy employees.  In the two minute walk between embassy and tapas, I had my friend English celebrity siting: Mark Francis, from Made In Chelsea.  And I freaked out a little.  If you’ve read the blog much, you know I regard Made in Chelsea as the ultimate guilty pleasure and I’ve been a regular watcher since arriving in this country.  So the night kicked off with a little thrill.

We went to a club called Amber, near the Barbican Centre.  It was a sprawling nightclub complex, really, which three different dance floors.  We stuck to the one that had a light-up Rubik’s Cube dance floor and go-go dancers (some on roller skates) wearing orange legwarmers.  For me, though, the highlight of Amber was the giant disco-ball drinks – the only other place I’d had communal drinks like that was at Asian restaurants, where they’re typically called Scorpion Bowls.  But these came served in the bottom half of a disco ball.

We were among the last to leave the club, around midnight, when we went to a bar a few blocks away (it had a sort of vintage feel and a big booth for all of us, but I forget what it was called or where it is).  And then around 1:30 am, we went to a Bar Nightjar.  I am obviously unschooled in London nightlife, but Nightjar is apparently a big deal.  By showing up at 1:30, we were able to waltz right in and get a booth in a little alcove in the back, and then we each got an incredibly complicated, lovingly-crafted cocktail.  When they kicked us out hours later, we paused at the little stage (pictured above, although the picture is an advertisement) to play some Beatles tunes. The waitstaff was so bemused by this display that they just stood there and waited for us to finish.

I didn’t realise until later, but when I told my friend Robert we’d gone there he said “And you just walked in? No waiting? No crappy table?So lucky!”  So my advice is, if you go, go really, really late at night.

The next day, having not really recovered, I left for Switzerland and had a mercifully wholesome holiday, with lots of looking at cathedrals and brisk walking and bread and cheese, but not a lot of copious quantities of alcohol.

 

Falmouth & Food

14 Monday May 2012

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Hola lovers (that was an obscure reference to one of my favorite blogs, GoFugYourself).  I am back from Switzerland! And I am spending hours on a Sunday evening queuing up blog posts about it, which is all the proof that I need that my social life is on less secure footing than I had previously thought.

Before I get into the details of my recent trip, I wanted to post about my trip to Falmouth, in Cornwall, at the end of April (my life is so great: two trips to Cornwall, one to Germany and Switzerland, and Valencia, Ireland, Wales and Southampton on the horizon).

So Falmouth was pretty great. Its home to an art college and a crapload of tourists and lots of cutesy shops and delicious restaurants.  All we did, all weekend, was walk around and eat.  Since Cornwall is a peninsula, the seafood is incredible. And since its very rural, its also known for its dairy – particularly clotted cream and ice cream.  So we made sure to immerse ourselves in local cuisine, which we earned by walking miles and miles every day.  As far as I can tell, eating and being outside are the only things to do in Cornwall.  Its especially important to eat cream tea (scones, clotted cream, jam, and tea), which we did enthusiastically.  As for the outside stuff, there are lots of options: walking, climbing, sailing, blokarting (seriously, that’s a thing), surfing…I think its pretty impossible to be bored, as long as the weather isn’t completely miserable.  And as we discovered, even miserable weather affords a certain amount of adventure and comedy.

Spring in England

26 Monday Mar 2012

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I know I’m late on the post today.  Its becoming an unfortunate Monday habit.  Don’t worry; my mother has already nagged me about it.

I have a good reason: the weather was insanely beautiful this weekend and I spent my time outside, having a life.  Ian and I did a pub ride to Waterbeach (we biked to a pub, ate fish & chips, and biked home); I did a 6 mile fun run (after the first four miles, it ceased to be fun); and we tooled around in the garden for a while.  Somehow my very, very modest garden took hours to put together.  But in a few weeks, we’ll have strawberries, spinach, chard, plus the start of a lot more stuff.  Its magic.

Ian’s headed to a conference this weekend, so I’m planning to get to work dismantling our shambles of a grille and turning it into a path to the shed:

That big pile of bricks that’s been sitting by the back door is not long for this world.

Pub Signs

14 Wednesday Mar 2012

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This is the fourth installment of a regular series entitled “Cantabriggian Details,” about Cambridge, UK.  The Eagle is a famous one because its where Watson & Crick celebrated the discovery of the double helix, and there’s a room in the back with signatures from RAF members.  Plus its in the dead center of downtown.  The Six Bells is right next to my new workplace, though, and the Live and Let Live is just around the corner from that – so if I’m partial to any of these places its those two.

Beer & Art Nouveau

02 Friday Mar 2012

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This is my third post about my 4 days in Brussels, and I haven’t even talked about the Tintin Museum (or the weird city, Nouvain le Neuve, where its located) or Ghent, which is possibly one of the most beautiful places in the world.

While in Brussels, we searched for every Victor Horta building we could find.  Apparently the city went through a heritage-trashing phase in the 1960s, and a lot of incredible old buildings were lost.  But many have been reused – an old department store became the Comic Book Center, and the Musical Instrument Museum, which is surprisingly cool, is in an old Horta commercial building as well (that’s the floor in the lobby on the bottom right, above).  And some of the detritus from the buildings that were destroyed have been re-purposed, most notably in the Horta Metro Station (above).  I couldn’t believe how many beautiful details there were on even the more mundane buildings – incredible balconies, transom windows, doors, ironwork…its so sad that Art Nouveau was so short-lived as a movement, even if it is decadent and wasteful.  I love it.

The other highlight of the time in Brussels was the beer.  Belgian-style beers are called lambics, and use open-air fermentation.  That means they just let the beer pick up whatever yeast happens to be floating around in the air and ferment that way; the result is a sour sort of flavor (seeing as its the same process used to make sourdough, that’s not surprising).  Lambics are often sweetened with sugar or fruit, but we brought home 5 bottles of the darker stuff (our favorite, Faro, can explode if not consumed in 2-3 weeks, so maybe its just as well that they were sold out).  The drinking in Brussels was awesome.

We went to the Carillon brewery (loved it.  Amazing.  Don’t miss it); the Delirium Tremens complex (five bars adjacent to each other, all selling Delirium products); and to a number of other more low-key establishments, including a crepe place where I got cider in a teacup.  I thought that was delightful.  We also tried ginevre, a Belgium gin-derivative that is delicious if you like the taste of paint thinner.  And the best part is, it was super cheap (the beer, not the paint thinner). I hadn’t anticipated taking multiple trips to Belgium, but we are talking about a trip to Luxembourg via Belgium, if only to stop off and bring more beer home with us.

Snacks in Tel Aviv

24 Friday Feb 2012

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I took 676 photos in four days in Belgium – its a picturesque place.  But I’m having trouble distilling my photos, so I turned to my file of images from Tel Aviv in November.  I don’t love olives and I didn’t eat hummous until I was 22, so Tel Aviv is not the culinary paradise for me that it is for many.  Even so, I ate incredibly well.  The pita bread at the corner store made me understand why people eat pita bread.  The pomegranates were literally the size of my face (see below).

Furthermore, a lot of the more memorable things I did in Israel centered on food.  I went to the Yemenite Quarter on my last day, and decided that I would walk up and down the market until I ran out of things to look at.  Three hours later I emerged with a lamb pita and a pomegranate and a bunch of mediocre photos.  On my last night, Jaime and I went to the fast food place on the corner to look for halloumi.  Except it turned out the place we went was a meat-only place (how could we have known? It was all in Hebrew), and the guy who translated for us looked at us warily before leaving and said “Are you guys ok?” – not as in, can you complete the transaction, but as in, are you okay in the fundamental sense? His concern was heart-warming but also depressing, because I like people to feel that I’m not completely incompetent.

We also spent a comical amount of time thinking about food while we were at the Dead Sea, because there wasn’t any food there (despite it being, you know, one of the world’s biggest tourist attractions).  And, as is a theme, I spent a lot of time poking around grocery stores and corner stores.  I brought back a packet of chocolate chips that I had every intention of putting into cookies but, now that I have them, I don’t want to open the bag with the ugly teddy bear logo and all the Hebrew writing.

I love food.