Prospect Heights, re-Joyce! The pastry revolution is upon you at Joyce Bakeshop. Cupcakes and cake blah blah blah but check out her classy selection of tea sweets and cookies, including financiers, madeleines, peanut butter parfaits and caramel pots de crème.
Joyce Bakeshop
646 Vanderbilt Ave
between Park Pl and Prospect Pl
718.623.7470
Raul the Bellhop
I wake up early on Friday morning, so I go downstairs to ask the concierge about nearby bike rentals. While I'm waiting for the concierge, the bellhop asks what I'm looking for. When I tell him I'm looking for a bike rental, he sighs. Things haven't been the same since Katrina, he says. He tells me the Ritz-Carlton won't open for another two years. They've just found out the Fairmount Hotel will never re-open.
I might have been able to rent a bike easily in the Quarter before the hurricane. But many businesses have had to close up shop. At the furniture store across the street, a sign says re-opening soon, but Raul says they're never going to re-open.
Rent on the small fine art gallery across the street is $14,000/month, way beyond what the gallery can pay now. The landlord is giving them one more month before he evicts them. The Gray Lines tour company just returned to the hotel a month ago, and whereas they used to do a brisk daily business, they can now only afford to man the desk three days a week.
Raul shows me pictures of the house across the river that he and his wife had bought in full before the hurricane. They had homeowner's insurance but no flood insurance, so the insurance company refuses to pay him. The house in the pictures is a wreck covered in mold spores. The pictures, which he keeps in his jacket pocket, are permanently crumpled in the shape of his thumb. A Catholic charity, not FEMA, has been working on clearing the debris.
He tells me about his two hellish days stuck on the interstate without food in the intense Southern heat. He points out other people in the hotel lobby who have lost everything -- the salt and pepper-haired white woman concierge with the garbled Cajun accent, the young white bellhop in his 20s who lived in St. Bernard's Parish, the young black bellhop Reggie who also lived with his family across the river. He tells me that twenty employees of the hotel still live in the hotel because they have nowhere else to go.
Bon Ton
My friend Jon, who comes to New Orleans frequently, recommends the Bon Ton Cafe, just outside the French Quarter. "But you have to go right now because they're not open on the weekends."
I rush over there in the hopes of making it for lunch service. I arrive about 5 minutes late but enter anyway. "Are you still open?" I ask.
A gray-haired gentleman greets me at the door. "Of course." He seats me at a table by the window. The restaurant is all dark wood and red and white checked tablecloths. Every table has a basket of packaged crackers. The waitresses are wearing old school white button down dresses and pad around in orthopedic shoes, while the waiters sport white chef's jackets. I love this place already.
On the waitress's recommendation, I order crawfish etoufee with parsleyed rice. Probably 60 smothered, peeled crawfish are laid in a ring around a mound of converted rice. It's buttery, extremely garlicky and rich, and it comes with a side of crisp fried onion rings. It's incredible, and despite the fact that I've got a stomach full of beignets, I manage to eat half of the huge plateful.
All around, I hear Southern accents, but my untrained ear can't pick out where they're all from. But everyone talks about Katrina -- what was it like, where were you, where's your home now? I remember on the anniversary of 9/11 thinking about where I was that day, thinking about how things had changed. It was still very raw, very real -- like it'd happened one day ago, not one year before.
The man who had greeted me at the door is now seated at another table. He and his female companion seem to be the proprietors, and they're having lunch with a gangly teen who looks like their son. The kitchen doors swing open a few times, the cooks and several children casually streaming in and out to chat with the proprietor's family.
Outside, a summer storm has started and it's pouring. I have my rain boots but no umbrella. My lovely waitress comes to reassure me that they're not going to lock the doors or anything, so I should just take my time. I stare out the window at the sheets of rain, waiting for it to let up. These days, when I see the belly of a low-flying plane, or when the weather is particularly gorgeous in New York and the sky is that perfect shade of blue, I think about 9/11. I wonder, whenever it rains hard here, as it must during hurricane season, do the people in Louisiana and Mississippi have flashbacks about Katrina?
The Bon Ton Cafe
401 Magazine St.
New Orleans, LA
504-524-3386
The Lower Ninth Ward
Our old friend Rick moved to New Orleans from New York before Katrina. He and his girlfriend Sarah come to the show and promise to drive us to the lower ninth ward on our last day in New Orleans. At about 10:30 on Saturday morning, we pile into his Jeep and head out of the French Quarter.
As we drive through Bywater, the landscape begins to change. Here and there, we see more piles of debris. The buildings look empty, unused. Then, suddenly, the buildings start to look completely abandoned. Every building, from garage to home to restaurant to dentist's office, now has spray-painted markings, usually next to the doorway. Sarah explains that the symbols refer to who has searched the building, when they searched the building, and what they found. It's eerie to see these marked up, abandoned houses, row after row, block after block, empty.
Then we drive across the bridge that separates the Lower Ninth from the rest of New Orleans. Sarah and Rick point out the area where the levees broke. When we get off the bridge, we see construction workers working on what will probably be a monument. After that, we see very few people, and very few signs of human life.
We turn into the neigborhood that bore the brunt of the damage. On the left, there's the house from the New Yorker article, a baby blue wooden slat covered home crunched on top of an overturned car. Over there, a concrete slab that was once the foundation to a home. On the right, a glimpse into former lives -- rotting couches, broken windows, abandoned. Everywhere, nature has taken over, feral vines and weeds and grass reclaiming the broken land.
The only other people we see in the neighborhood during the hour that we're there are a contractor or two, a car full of teens, and a film crew with its camera sticking out of the passenger's side window. The heat is intense, and I think about all of those people who were begging to be rescued from their melting rooftops. Every single one of these houses, or house lots, was a home to a family, maybe a large family. Where have they gone?
I think about how the country rallied behind New York after 9/11, coming to visit, to remember the devastation, to support New Yorkers and support our businesses, to bring our economy up and to show their sympathy. But where are those people now? Where is our anger? Where is our sympathy?
I regret that I never saw New Orleans before Katrina, but I'm really glad I got to see it now. It's important to see how a whole city, a whole region can be broken by neglect, by inequity. It was shocking. It broke my heart.
Help
Share Our Strength is having a Gulf Coast fundraiser -- 100 restaurants in New York City are donating part of their sales on Tuesday, August 29, to hurricane relief. People in the area, people displaced from the area, still need a lot of help.
If you can afford to visit the area, you should. Talk to the locals, bring your business to the city and see what is happening for yourself.
Haunted Hotel
We check in at the Monteleone, which is apparently haunted by small children. I'd like to think something happened on the 5th or 11th floors, since the middle bank of elevators don't stop on either floor.
Acme Oyster House
After checking in, we go for a rather middling meal at the Acme Oyster House. I only have one raw oyster. (I am sorry, Calvin Trillin, but it is August and hot as hell, and I am not taking my chances on a plateful of warm water Louisiana oysters the day before a gig, no matter how good they look.)
The fried catfish is salty and crunchy-coated, but the fish itself is bland and oddly watery. The New Orleans medley is also salty and half-hearted. I daresay the Cajun grub was better over in that Bethesda, MD joint. We take a slow, food coma stroll through the French Quarter. I've been in New Orleans for a few hours already and I'm still waiting to be blindsided by the French Quarter's charm. Instead, what I see is the hollow bone structure of what was once a beautiful lady. The hotels are all vacant. The ornate, wrought iron balconies, decorated with lush planter boxes, are empty. Even Bourbon St. seems sad and lonely. A cover band plays a deafeningly loud facsimile of The Stones' "Brown Sugar" to an anemic audience of two. There are two or three for sale or for rent signs on every block.
I'm waiting for the beat, the rhythm, the funk of New Orleans to get all up in my grill. Instead, I feel the silence, the emptiness. By the second day, I'm overwhelmed by the silence. Imagine Times Square, totally devoid of tourists, its neon lights flashing for a missing audience. Where is everybody?
Beignets? Ben-YEAH!
Despite the fact that the jambalaya and the french fries and the catfish are expanding in my overworked gullet, we stop at the famed Cafe du Monde to try the beignets and some iced cafe au lait. I love me some beignets. The big square of open air seating is lightly cooled by constantly spinning high ceiling fans. The tile floor is sprinkled with lots of excess powdered sugar.
I shake the bag of beignets around so I can get them coated in the powdered sugar. They're four by four inch square pillows, hot and fresh from the fryer. Despite the swampy August heat, I lean over the beignet, away from my clothes, and take a hot, sweet bite. The dough is firmer than I had expected, much more substantial than a krispy kreme. With my milky iced chicory cafe au lait, it's HEAVEN. The second morning, Miho and I share a bag of three. The Asian waitress turns to her and asks, "Vietnamese?" I look at all the waitresses and, except for a few surly looking teenagers, they're all older Vietnamese women. This reminds me that Pho Grand in Manhattan makes their Vietnamese coffee with Cafe du Monde grounds. What's the Vietnamese connection? According to Thomas's friend Kathryn, New Orleans has the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. It's hard to get good Chinese food but easy to get great Vietnamese.
That night, we have a great gig at Tipitina's. I get pretty drunk -- so drunk that as soon as we get back to the hotel, I decide that the only thing that will make me happy is a bag of beignets. We stumble through the Quarter towards Cafe du Monde. It occurs to me that I am drunkenly stumbling up Bourbon St. Some people are out and about, but it's not even as many as you would find on a Friday night on Bedford in Williamsburg. A man on an 2nd floor balcony swings cheap beads at us, presumably hoping for a glimpse at our tetas. Despite what Joe Francis thinks, my mosquito bites are not so cheaply bought.
We make it to Cafe du Monde at around midnight (lucky for late night revelers, it's open 24 hours). Miho, Thomas and I eat three beignets each this time with some decaf. I've decided that beignets are the best alcohol soaking snack known to man. I also feel a little sick. But what I wouldn't give to feel that kind of sickness again right now.
Cafe du Monde
1039 Decatur St.
New Orleans, LA
To be continued...
Name: Marysella Castillo
Occupation: Looking for something with some benefits...
Borough: Harlem for now, but have lived in Queens, and Brooklyn. Raised in Miami.
Relationship status: Single
What did you eat today?
Started the day off late with a sandwich-toasted rye, Calabrese ham, Genoa salami, American cheese, Prosciutto, mayo and mustard with some diet green tea. Lunch- my homemade chicken noodle soup-leftover. Dinner- 2 chicken tacos from The Great Burrito on Amsterdam. Dessert – Ben & Jerry's Strawberry Kiwi Swirl, ironically enough as I watched WORKOUT on Bravo…
What do you never eat? Bananas and milk (straight up)- I am all about texture, and both of these make me gag…
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:
garlic, cilantro, lemon, lime, and parmigiano reggiano.
What is your favorite kitchen item?
My Kitchenaid Garlic Press, my mom tries to take it with her to Miami every time she visits. She bought one, but we can't seem to find another Kitchenaid one.
Where do you eat out most frequently?
Yama, on Irving, there is usually a wait and I eat there so often the host brings a chair from downstairs and adds it to the sushi bar. Shake Shack, I can't believe I worked right next to this place for 4 months and thought it was some wack park food place. Thanks to my friends at Chikalicious, and my friend, Andre, they have shown me the light. Now, I take all my out of town friends. Chikalicious. I have been going there since they opened. I love this place. It makes me feel like a little girl at a tea party (ok, an upscale tea party…). Must try the iced coffee (light with their simple syrup). Lastly, Di Fara's another place, I discovered after I moved out of Brooklyn. I get my nails done in Brooklyn (will travel for a good manicure…) and now I go visit Dom Demarco, it is so worth the wait, just not when its 101 degrees outside. It is also a great place to practice patience…….If you've never been look at it as art and not as your typical pizza place. In Miami, Steve's Pizza. Their sauce is sweeter than most. Di Piazza Pizzeria in Hialeah. Not only is their food great but they have the best garlic knots you will ever taste. Many special moments have been celebrated at this restaurant. It is typical Sicilian Italian, in the middle of a predominantly Cuban neighborhood.
World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?
My mom's coconut rice, potato salad, and stuffed beef. She is a great cook, and this is her special occasion typical Colombian meal. Many flock to her house on Christmas to enjoy this meal.
We're not in Kansas anymore
We arrive at LaGuardia 3 hours before the flight to New Orleans. I left my house to pick Miho up at 6:35 a.m. for a 10:30 a.m. flight. I'm happy to report that the security check wait is not nearly as long as we had anticipated, and we probably could have arrived at 9 a.m. instead.
My new M.O. for reducing flying anxiety is to sleep through as much of the flight as possible. Actually, I can't really help it, my body just shuts down entirely as soon as I board the plane and take my seat. My secret -- a window seat to lean up against, an eye mask and a pair of earplugs.
I wake up as we're descending into New Orleans. Miho and I ooh and ahh as we fly alongside huge vertical cotton puff clouds suspended in midair. The circle of tall puffs pour gray shadows over a lush green clearing surrounded by trees. As the plane makes its descent towards the runway, we fly over bloomy green and puce muck, out of which spindly trees poke up like dark stubble.
God's Country
We're picked up at the airport by Billy from Rykodisc and our driver, Hotel Al, a white-haired man with a fantastic round drawl and enough joie de vivre to fuel all the dacquiri machines on Bourbon Street. He's worked for the Monteleone Hotel for 47 years. His apartment is in the French Quarter, just around the corner from hotel.
GANDA: Are these the suburbs?
HOTEL AL: Yes ma'am. This here's Metairie, Louisiana. Oh, they love it out here [except it sounds more like Aw, dey love id out heah. --Ed.] They call it God's country. [Pause.] 'Cept I bet people say that about New York too.
BILLY: Uh, no.
****
HOTEL AL: See that yellow line over there on the wall? That's how high the water was. I brought my mother-in-law out here nine times, and she just kept comin' back, I couldn't believe it. [Pause. Then guilty laughter from the passengers.] I'm just kiddin'. [HOTEL AL Laughs gleefully.]
****
HOTEL AL: These are the famous above ground cemeteries of New Orleans. Everybody dies in alphabetical order. It's true, I check the paper every day. [Turns to Billy.] Let me tell you, a guy like you, last name starts with "F", you gotta wait til about 11:00. If you pass 11:00, you alright.
****
HOTEL AL: See this Winn-Dixie? They ripped the lock and cleared the whole store in about two hours. Over here's where they were sniping at the police. Four people killed every night, they say crime is down. Yeah, it's downtown.
****
GANDA: Hey Al, I heard you have a sister who used to be your brother.
HOTEL AL: [laughing] Who told you to say that? Raul told you to say that? It's true, I got a sister used to be my brother, I got an aunt used to be my uncle.
****
HOTEL AL: This here is the French Quarter, where the women are women and the men are too. [As we cross the intersection at Bourbon Street, with a fine New Orleans drawl to a touristy-looking passerby.] Excuse me, do you know where Bourbon Street is?
TOURIST: [shrugs earnestly] Sorry.
[Everyone in the van breaks into peals of giggles.]
HOTEL AL: [To another passerby a few feet down.] Excuse me, do you know where Bourbon Street is?
LOCAL: [without skipping a beat] Yeah, you got 20 bucks?
Part 1 of several -- it's probably going to take me a few days to put together my thoughts on New Orleans. In the meantime, you can go look at my Flickr pics.
Name: Adam Levy
Occupation: musician
Borough: Manhattan
Relationship status: happily dating a truthmonger from Poughkeepsie
What did you eat today?
Breakfast was iced coffee, black (made from last night’s leftover pot) and an onion bagel with egg salad (sold separately) from Kossar’s. Lunch was mi xao chay (mixed vegetables with tofu, over soft noodles) from Pho Grand. It’s early evening now, and I haven’t had dinner yet, but did have a slice of banana-walnut-date bread with a cup of peppermint tea. I have a gig tonight, and don’t like to eat a large meal before I sing. Afterwards — who knows?
What do you never eat?
Sweetbreads, never! And I recently stopped eating any kind of blue cheese, because it has penicillium bacteria and I’ve discovered that I’m allergic to penicillin. Maybe I’m just paranoid about this – no doctor has advised me to stop eating blue cheese. I think that’s about it. I don’t understand how people can have a long list of foods they hate. Wait, one more thing: necks! At Thanksgiving in my house, there was always a fight over who would get the turkey neck. My stepfather also considered the other end a delicacy.
Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:
Sriracha hot sauce (“rooster sauce”), unsalted butter, at least one container of Guss’ pickles, assorted cheeses, butter lettuce, a can of ground Illy coffee (even though I think it says not to refrigerate it).
What is your favorite kitchen item?
OXO hand-held grater, which I sometimes use for cheese – but more often use to mince garlic.
Where do you eat out most frequently?
Dumpling House on Eldridge Street. Their simple, cheap menu never fails to satisfy. Have you tried their kimchi? It’s got some tart apples and dried shrimp in the mix. Not a lot. Just enough to make your mouth ask, “What the fuck!?”
World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?
My Aunt Susan’s duck – glazed with fresh orange juice, reduced red wine, and raspberry preserves, served over braised sauerkraut. If the world was ending, I’d eat the whole duck! That, along with a simple salad, and mashed turnips. I’d wash it all down with a hearty Italian red. Bananas foster for dessert. Repeat as desired, until everything dissolves to black.
Adam Levy's Nice Place to Visit (not a place but a music thing) is in residency at Pete's Candy Store (not a candy store but a bar/venue) for the month of August. If you can't make it to PCS, there are plenty of gigs listed here. Posted early because I'm leaving for New Orleans tomorrow.
So yes, I've been very busy this month and I missed a You Are What You Eat for the week. I'm very sorry. I will be busy running around like a dizzy cockroach til after Sept. 9, the day my dear friends Winnie and Chris get married.
My big event for this weekend was Winnie's bachelorette bash in fanancy Wainscott, close to Bridgehampton. No, the Hamptons are not my stilo, and we don't usually roll like that -- in fact, this was my first time in the Hamptons, and I've lived in New York City for over 7 years. But our friend has a friend who has a house there, so all 22 of our X chromosomes and ovaries got to convene in a pretty little beach house there. It was heavenly. We gabbed, exfoliated, played Scrabble on the beach, discussed the merits and demerits of feminine products, and participated in all manner of pre-marital rituals which I cannot reveal here.
And of course, everyone being a friend of Winnie's, we cooked up a storm and ate like queens. I lugged four bags up to the house for the weekend, and most of it was food from the Friday Greenmarket. When cooking at a weekend rental, there are a few essentials I like to make sure I bring with me: my santoku knife, a paring knife, a cutting board, garlic, and olive oil. Butter and parmigiano reggiano came too. I also hauled up a few pounds of peaches and nectarines (from Migliorelli -- divine, especially the scarlet-skinned nectarines, exploding with juice), four ripe tomatoes from Sycamore Farms, two loaves of rustic bread, a few pieces of cheese from Bobolink Dairy Farm (the semi-soft drum cheese was especially good), a gorgeous bunch of basil, candy-striped and red beets from Yuno Farms, and ten ears of white corn from Sycamore Farms.
Seems like overkill, I know, especially considering that I am my own sherpa, but I suspected that the pickings within walking distance of the house wouldn't be as excellent as the bounty in Union Square, and I was right. There was a small fruit and vegetable stand by a corn field between the house and the beach that was done up to look all country quaint, with overpriced fruit and vegetables piled up in teal woodpulp baskets. But selection was limited and I could tell the fruit was not from 'round these parts. I correctly guessed that the huge cherries were from Washington, and I think the peaches were from California. I saw a cardboard box in the back stuck with all the peach stickers they had peeled off those peaches -- I guess PLU numbered stickers don't really fit with the wholesome roadside stand image. Seems like a crime to be selling out-of-town tennis ball peaches when the locals are so good right now, but I'm not sure the Hamptonites care.
Saturday night's grand feast included pan-fried Spanish mackerel with fennel, sage and butter, seared scallops, and an array of vegetable sides. The most surprising dish (to me) was a fabulous herb-laden pasta dish my friend Jeeyoon made. Simple, green and robustly aromatic, it's an herbacious expression of excess in a light, summery dish. It's also an excellent side for fish. I'm fudging a recipe from memory here, changing a few steps and adding a little garlic to her recipe for bite -- though it was delicious without it.
Spaghetti with herbs and cherry tomatoes
1 1b. package of spaghetti
2 pints cherry or grape tomatoes
Olive oil
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 large bunch parsley, stems removed
1 smaller bunch dill
1 handful of sage leaves
1 small bunch basil
1 bunch mint
Salt & pepper
Grated parmigiano
Cook spaghetti according to directions. Halve the cherry tomatoes. Mince all of your herbs. Gently heat up a good amount of olive oil, about a cup, in a saute pan. Add garlic and cook for a minute over medium heat, but don't let it brown. Add your cherry tomatoes and toss them around for another minute. Toss the minced herbs with the tomatoes and garlic and turn off the heat. Toss your cooked spaghetti in the herb tomato mixture. Add more olive oil to moisten as necessary and season with salt and pepper. Serve immediately with grated parmigiano. Serves 10 side dish servings if you've got 5 other courses as we did. Otherwise, I would say it serves 4 main or 6 side.
On a side note: I had a fabulous, fabulous weekend with the girls, but the Hamptons -- let's discuss. I get it -- clean beaches, blue blue ocean as far as the eye can see, an easy if crowded train ride away from the city. But the ostentatious houses with 20 foot privet hedges are a little gross, as are the abundance of codpiece sports cars and the lushly irrigated gardens (I'm from California -- as far as I'm concerned, the world is experiencing a perpetual drought.) Is there some dress code written into the city ordinance that requires women of a certain age to plump up their lips, blond up their hair, and wear white capris and fishing hats? Do the men receive standard issue pastel polo shirts once they've broiled on the beach to the precise shade of borscht? I know I shouldn't be surprised, but what's up with the J. Crew catalog homogeny? I definitely felt like an outsider. I guess I'm a bit too low rent for les Hamptons. Not that I would kick any of those houses out of bed.
Hello dear readers,
Normally I wouldn't pull you into my day job drama, but Obi-wan Kenobi, I need your help. Please subscribe to the Penguin Podcast. It's all about books and authors. You can click here to subscribe in iTunes;
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Super fun news. A few years ago, I tried to get into voiceover. Nothing came of it because I tend to sound like a 13 year old with a slight cold, as evidenced in my podcasts. But I got a call recently to audition for a role that required a Thai accent and, long story short, I got hired! I've overdubbed the speaking voice for Mali, a small character in the new Tony Jaa movie, The Protector! My girl's not the lead, but she's pivotal to the plot. I also redid the voice of one of the news reporters. (The actor's accent was fine but the writing was fresh off the boat.)
Isn't that insanely awesome? The Asian nerd in me is super thrilled about having overdubbed a martial arts movie. I encourage you all to go see the movie and then go eat Thai food at Sripraphai or Zabb in Queens -- that's what I'll be doing. Opens in theaters across the nation on August 25!
Incidentally, the original name of the movie is Tom Yum Goong, as in the soup. Of course I got hired to do voiceover for a movie named after a soup.
Part 2 of 2. Read Part 1 here.
When in Brugge, rent a bike.
Actually, I'm adopting this policy for every bicycle-friendly town I visit from now on. We took the train from the little town of Ieper to the larger historic town of Brugge. We rented bicycles at the train station and I bought a pocket map of the city for 50 cents. Zipping around the picturesque city on a two wheeler was pure bliss. No industrial strength Houdini chains necessary -- the rental bikes came with locks that just locked the back wheel with a lever pull and a key. Bike parking was available everywhere. There are very few cars in the scenic city center. As Maya said, Brugge, Ieper, and all the surrounding villages in Heuvelland are so cute, they look like they're made of chocolate.
The city center is shaped like an egg. You can ride down the knobbly cobblestone streets and along pristine blue-green canals in a few hours, easily escaping the tourist traffic jams of the southwest corner of the city. There are plenty of churches with rococo pulpits and stained glass, if that's you're thing. I was perfectly happy just following the charming little rows of houses down litter free paths, marveling at how well kept all the flower boxes in the windows were.
And, of course, I was food hunting. When we first got to the Markt, the town's touristy center, I joined the long lines at the frites stands. But then I realized that eating frites from a frites stand in the Markt is kind of like eating a $3 dirty dog from a cart in Times Square -- maybe iconic, but probably not what the locals do.
My first stop was a cute little tea room up Vlaamingstraat whose name I neglected to write down -- Servado van Markem or something. You can almost see the name on the napkin in the picture. Brugge has tons of cute little tea room/patisseries in the less touristy northern part of the city. They're excellent for noshing, map examining pit stops, and using the loo. My dessert was pretty fantastic -- it's called a "soleil", and it had a liqueur soaked cake layer on the bottom, topped with whole raspberries, raspberry puree, a substantial whipped cream head and a bruleed meringue flower on top. Scrumptious with the pot of darjeeling, and a perfectly civilized way to spend an afternoon alone.
When in a foreign land, it's good to talk to complete strangers with enormous knives.
Riding east on Langestraat, I came across an adorable little butcher shop with knee-high statues of a cow and a pig just outside the door. I parked my bike just outside the shop and walked in, not really knowing what I was going to say if the woman behind the counter didn't speak English. (In general, people spoke English quite well; despite being close to the border of France, even our attempts at French often received responses in English.)
I picked up a jar of mustard and placed it on the counter, eyeing the neat displays -- crystal clear jellied chicken, bright red sausage links air drying in the back, a refrigerator case full of salamis and cured pork and tube meats of many varieties, pretty little roasted hens, tasty looking head cheese with rosy hunks of flesh magically suspended in gel.
"Do you speak English?" I asked the youngish woman behind the counter.
"A little bit," she replied.
"Which of these are Belgian cheeses?" I asked.
"All of them." I chose the brugsche blomme, a semi-soft, melty and mild cheese with a white bloomy rind and gentle tang.
I asked about a freshly grilled pile of white sausages that a young male butcher had just brought out of the kitchen. "Gebakken witte wurst. Do you want to try it?" he asked enthusiastically. He sliced a tip off one of the still warm sausages and handed it to me. The springy casing gave way to the smooth, fine white meat, with little bits of green onion and an ephemeral spice top note.
"It's delicious! What's in it?" I asked.
"Three kilos white chicken, three kilos white...pig, white pig, two kilos...fat? Fat!" he smiled.
"I'll take one." The lady wrapped the sausage in the same pink and white checked paper lined with plastic that encased my brugsche blomme. She began to ring up my purchases when I noticed a few adorable ribbon accessorized jars at the counter.
"What's this?" I asked.
"Advokaat! You don't know advokaat? It is...eh...eggs, and sugar, and alcohol. But don't eat it all or you will be drunk! You want to try?"
The man went back into the kitchen and returned with a large, nearly empty jar of the viscous yellow liquid and a coffee spoon.
"There's no milk in it?"
"No milk," he beamed, "Just eggs, sugar, and alcohol. We eat it on birthdays, with a spoon, or over ice cream." It was rich and creamy, with a texture like condensed milk, but with the sharp sweetness of some kind of alcohol.
"I'll take two. No, three." I drank in the little shop scene as she added up all of my little receipts in her head. "May I take a picture?"
"Yes." I snapped this shot of the lady butcher as she began to help a local who had walked in.
The man called his wife, a dark haired version of the woman who first helped me, and I got a snapshot of the two of them with their enormous knife.
I thanked everyone profusely, segregated my hot sausage away from the cheese and little jars of advokaat in my shoulder bag and went outside to unlock my bike. As I tried to figure out where I would go next, the dark haired woman motioned for me to come back inside the store. I leaned my bike up against the glass window again and walked back in.
"Would you like to see the shop?" the butcher asked.
But of course I wanted to see the shop! The dark haired lady told me that they make most of the tube meats and sausages shown in the display, using an enormous grinding machine with the circumference of a card table. They let me poke around in the back room, where two giggling teenage girls were skewering white meat chicken kabobs and vegetables. And I craned my neck to peek into the room in the far back, where a private party was enjoying a feast. I had a flash fantasy where I was one of those cardigan-wearing old men, living a charmed life in Brugge, holding a small catered dinner party for my 80th birthday behind the butcher shop, and spooning advokaat over ice cream.
I asked for some advice on where to go next and introduced myself. Nancy Dobbels, the kind-eyed first lady I spoke with, laughed and said, "I'm the big boss, but I don't have anything to say." The adorable couple were Nancy's sister Claudine Dobbels and her husband Philip Van de Voorde. I hope that someday I can return on an assignment for Saveur or Gourmet and get the whole story behind the butcher sisters and their dreamy little shop.
Slagerij De Leeuwebrug
Langestraat 61
8000 Brugge
050/34.08.91
"KWALITEITSPRODUCTEN!" says the flyer.
Fair food is fair food everywhere in the world.
With its bumper cars, kiddie rides, and try-your-luck-sucka games, the fair across the street from my Ieper hotel was like a Belgian San Gennaro festival. Except that in the morning, there was no trash ANYWHERE. Clean as a whistle. Total Stepford Festival.
The food, however, was very familiar -- carbs and grease, carbs and grease. I can't say the frites were any better than, say, a newspaper cone of chips at a chip shop in London, or even a paper cone with curry sauce from Pommes Frites on 2nd Ave. in the East Village, but maybe I shouldn't judge Belgian frites by the example I got from the local street fair. But I don't have the metabolism or the constitution to be sampling frites all over the country.
I liked the Brussel waffel (pictured), which was lovely, airy and crisp, despite being totally asphyxiated by a blanket of powdered sugar. The suiker waffel was much heavier than I had expected, made with dense, layered pastry dough with a crisp shell of caramelized sugar -- nice, but not for me.
At the folk festival, I tried a hotcake (zoete ovenkoeken), puffed and baked in a wood fired oven, smeared with butter and a tablespoon of grainy brown sugar. It was really nourishing and yummy, something you imagine a Dickens pauper would love to warm his hands and gullet with, though it could have used a bit of salt.
Fair food name that takes the cake (ahem), however, is oliebollen -- that which we call zeppolli, by any other name would still be greasebomb heartstoppers. But I like how oliebollen is just a dyslexic reading away from "oily balls".
I am totally only 4 degrees of separation from Condi Rice.
I sat next to a political counselor who's about to start working at the embassy in Morocco on the flight back to JFK. He told me that the Helmand, that great Afghan restaurant I went to in Baltimore, is owned by Hamid Karzai's brother, whom he knows, because he used to be Hamid Karzai's counterpart on an assignment in Pakistan back in the day. (Aren't you intrigued? I was. My plane buddy also had a long salt and pepper scraggly beard and was reading Learn Arabic in 10 minutes a day.)
Ganda ham is maybe more common than its nomenclature might lead you to believe.
When I first started using Google, the first site that came up was for Ganda was a Belgian ham that shared my name. I sent the company an email that said, Hey, your name's Ganda, my name's Ganda. How about sending me a promotional t-shirt? And they actually did send me a cap, a t-shirt, and a sample of their ham. Sadly, I forgot about the ham until well after its expiration date. I still haven't tried Ganda ham, but you can try the Ganda ham sandwich at pretty much any Panos, a Belgian chain at all the train stations that seems to be their Au Bon Pain. I like that I'm in the "Tasty" section.
