Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.
the wonderful bún at Lille Saigon 1 (not to be confused with their competitor Saigon Lille Cafe up the street–a splitting of ways apparently caused by some nasty divorce). but really, what could go wrong when you combine rice vermicelli, pickled carrots & daikon, fresh cucumber, fried onions, bean sprouts, peanuts, tofu fried with lemongrass, and sweet/spicy fish sauce? nothing. … Read More
One of the highlights of my trip to Portugal was a visit to Antiga Confeitaria de Belém, considered the mecca of portuguese egg tarts. Normally you can get custard tarts in any Portuguese snack bar by asking for “pastéis de nata”, but the best ones are to be found at this bakery, served warm out of the oven, and specially … Read More
Only in Norway could caustic soda be advertised as something to cook your fish with (“luting” being the verb for making “lutefisk”–a dish commonly served at Christmas, no less). An apt description by a Norwegian-American named Dave Fox: Norwegians didn’t invent lutefisk because they thought it was tasty. A long time ago, in the pre-refrigeration epoch, salting and drying fish … Read More
yes, oslo is one of the most expensive cities in the world, and people often complain about measure it using the price of beer. the alternative newspaper natt&dag has a weekly “beer barometer” (ølbarometer) which lists oslo’s cheapest beer places, but unfortunately not online. fear not, I can share with you oslopuls’ recent survey of 55 bars around the city, with prices … Read More
had a nice visit to Paris with my parents, and was surprised to learn a few things about food in France: as expected, the food at most of the random French restaurants we tried was delicious. unexpected: the portions were huge. any dessert that even mentions chocolate is swimming in it. and chocolate shops are everywhere. moules frites: our waitress … Read More
this weekend I passed by this tent in Aker Brygge, and the signs out front caught my eye: Okay, specifically I was intrigued by “whale wok” (wok is the term in Norwegian for stir-fry) and “whale kebab”. I went in to see if I could find the kebabs, but this is the closest I found: You can’t tell from the … Read More
break time! I needed a snack, so I thought I’d try something new–and what better than a retro-looking chocolate bar? oh the excitement… too bad it’s kinda gross. Chocolate covered fake-banana flavoured thing on a layer of marshmallow. ew…
couldn’t help but notice a large pile of “iranian sweet lemons” outside a middle eastern store today (strangely they were all individually wrapped in little plastic bags), so I bought one to try at home. unlike a lemon, there is no acidity at all (even less than in an orange)… and it’s not very sweet, but rather delicate tasting. refreshing!
food findings from a short but sweet visit to Krakow: ok, it wasn’t *really* cake in a can, but only the filling (to my disappointment–sort of like discovering poutine in a can is actually only the sauce). this time it was definitely lard on bread. not too bad, but I should have added some salt. I later found a bottled … Read More
Mala xiangguo is a new dish I discovered on my last trip to China; and I’m hoping someone just recently invented this, because I don’t know how I could not have tried it before! After seeing people line up for this dish at different food courts, we finally tried it at a sit-down place called… yep, the name of the … Read More