Tag: Food

Valerie Conners
Meat, glorious meat! Went to one of Philly’s more interesting restaurants, Ansill, to try the special “European Barbecue.” It involved a plethora of mysterious meats (think quartered hearts and kidneys from an unidentified beast) and very tasty grilled meats served with a variety of dipping sauces. The experience brought me right back to my days living in Leuven, Belgium, and one of my fave restaurants there.

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Searching for the Strudel Man of Zizkov

by David Farley | 03.06.09 | 10:39 AM ET

Photo by James Cridland, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

It might have looked that way, but my Czech friend Milos and I were not aimlessly wandering the hilly streets of Prague’s Zizkov (pronounced: Zheezh-kof) neighborhood. We had a destination in mind. A few minutes earlier, the excitable Milos suddenly got an idea: “Strudel,” he yelled out. “There’s a guy somewhere in Zizkov who’s been selling the best apple strudel in Prague from a tiny shop in his apartment building. We must find him. Now.”

My stomach, which had been rumbling just a few minutes earlier, agreed. Milos began accosting people on the street with the frantic demeanor of someone who’d just realized their child had gone missing. A mother and daughter carrying plastic shopping bags pointed down the hill. A few blocks later a sinewy bearded guy walking a dog pointed up the hill. A gypsy woman standing on the street corner, inexplicably holding a plate of sauerkraut, pointed in a completely different direction. Finally we were crossing Konevova street, the busy dark avenue that splits the valley in Zizkov. 

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The Angelina Jolie of Olive Trees

by David Farley | 03.04.09 | 2:24 PM ET

If you have an extra $90 sitting around and a long-standing desire to tell people at cocktail parties that you own an olive tree in the Italian countryside (and, really, who doesn’t these days?) then this site is for you. For just under a hundred bucks per year, you can adopt an olive tree in Italy. There’s no word if the tree will send you letters telling you about its progress, but you will get some of its goods—two liters’ worth.

Morning Links: Best Job in the World Finalists, ‘Narco-Tours’ and More

by Michael Yessis | 03.04.09 | 8:18 AM ET

• The 50-person short list for Tourism Queensland’s “best job in the world” includes a man who staged a musical on an Ontario street and Geek Brief’s Cali Lewis.
• The Tsunami Museum commemorating the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami is open in Indonesia.
• China plans to open its earthquake ruins to tourists.
• Interesting essay by Alexei Tsvetkov on leaving Prague: “In the end some people here will probably miss me, but not many, not too much, and not for long.” (via The Rumpus)
• Ryan Adams: Travel writer? BlackBook has his take on Hollywood. Here are his musical takes on New York and Jacksonville.
• “Narco-tours” are on the rise in Mexico.
• Independent Traveler lists 10 reasons you should travel now.
• Esquire lists the 59 best breakfast places in America.
• Are you an, uh, anal traveler? (via BootsnAll Today)
• How great is this: John Wray will be giving a reading from his new book Lowboy while traveling on a Brooklyn-bound L train next week. Details in this video.

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Sawasdee, Golden Arches

by Julia Ross | 03.03.09 | 12:35 PM ET

Photo by kennymatic via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Anyone who has frequented a suburban swimming pool or beach resort on the East Coast in recent summers should be familiar, by now, with the sound of consonant-heavy Eastern European accents piercing the salt air. That’s because thousands of college students from places like Moldova and Ukraine arrive each year to work summer gigs as lifeguards, waitresses or hotel clerks under the increasingly popular J-1 student visa program.

Now comes word that the next big J-1 wave could be from Thailand. GlobalPost reports that large numbers of Thai students have begun securing summer visas to work at U.S. fast food joints, with McDonald’s emerging as the workplace of choice. The story portrays the students as single-minded in their endeavor, trudging dutifully to the local Mickey D’s in unglamorous locales like Pittsburgh and Mobile, determined to parlay foreign work experience into hospitality-related jobs back in Bangkok. I hope they’re working in some fun as well. If the Serbian kids who staffed my sister’s pool outside Washington, D.C., last summer are any indication, I’d advise the Thais to consult their Eastern European counterparts on the finer points of letting loose.

I’m not in McDonald’s often (maybe twice a year), but I’ll keep an eye out this summer to see if the trend has reached the nation’s capital.

Morning Links: Walking on Broadway, Fees for Airline Toilets and More

by Michael Yessis | 02.27.09 | 9:43 AM ET

• New York City plans to turn parts of Broadway into pedestrian malls.
• The inevitable Coldplay reference comes only four seconds into this video about that ice music festival in northern Italy.
• Are the “taste police” out to get German bakers?
• The literature of men in boats vs. women in houses. (via Arts & Letters Daily)
• Here’s the latest Carnival of Cities.
• Happy belated 90th birthday, Grand Canyon National Park. (thanks for the reminder @evaholland and @AlisonSWellner)
• The economic downturn has boosted Peace Corps applications and the number of financial types snowboarding the Alps.
• Mule drivers in period costumes need TSA security clearance, too! So Boing Boing started a contest to create mule-driver TSA IDs.
• Will passengers soon need to pay to use the toilet on Ryanair? Just how ridiculous can the carrier get?
• Finally, this is fun to say: Sassy the Sustainable Sasquatch.

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Playing Chicken in San Francisco

by David Farley | 02.26.09 | 3:25 PM ET

Photo of hens by bigbold via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Chickens for pets and meat? Civil Eats checks out the “urban hen” trend happening in San Francisco. Like most people, I’d have a hard time killing something I’ve been taking care of for a while, but at the same time, knowing where your meat (and eggs) are coming from is a good thing. I once got flack from animal-rights people over a story I wrote about taking part of a pig killing in the Czech hinterlands. It’s true: it wasn’t pretty, but my critics missed the main point: raising your own animal and killing it yourself seems a lot more ethical than supporting factory-farming.

In Taiwan, A Toilet Too Far

by Julia Ross | 02.26.09 | 10:57 AM ET

Photo by lookslikeamy via Flickr (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en).

My great affection for the Taiwanese notwithstanding, sometimes I’m just plain baffled by the trends that take hold on the island. Case in point: toilet-themed restaurants. Yes, a chain called Modern Toilet now has nine outposts in Taiwan, and is apparently a hit among teens and college students. GlobalPost describes the fad this way:

“Here, customers sit on toilets and eat on covered washbasins. The most popular dishes are chocolate ice cream or curry chicken, served in a mini-toilet. Why? ‘It looks like poo-poo,’ explained Jary Wei, assistant manager at the chain’s Taipei branch. ‘The customers think it’s funny.’”

Charming.

Airplane, prison and hospital-themed restaurants have also caught on in Taiwan—more evidence that the island takes its cultural cues from Japan, which pioneered the trend—but, really, toilets?

In defense of Taiwanese college students, I’ll just say that I advised a number of them while I was living on the island and found them to be exceedingly bright and cosmopolitan. Then again, they’re under a lot of academic pressure, so maybe a visit to Modern Toilet yields some, uh, relief.

Tweeting for Kimchi Tacos

by Julia Ross | 02.25.09 | 2:43 PM ET

I’ve always envied the whole L.A. taco truck subculture; if I lived out there, I think I’d probably overdose on all the spicy goodness. Now that I’ve heard the story of the Kogi taco truck, I’m really jealous. Launched in November, the truck has gained an avid following for its fusion of Korean barbecue and traditional taco/burrito fare (imagine topping juicy carne asada with soy-sesame chili). But what’s really making news is the owners’ unusual marketing approach, which involves Tweeting the truck’s expected location a couple hours ahead of arrival, setting off a taco-minded flash mob. 

According to the Los Angeles Times, the operation has become a “social networking juggernaut,” drawing between 300 and 800 people at each stop, with waits of up to two hours (Kogi staff play Japanese reggaeton to soothe the crowds). Even more interesting, it’s a bicoastal effort: Kogi’s public relations maven, Alice Shin, writes the Twitter feed and blogs about the truck’s doings all the way from New York. There’s a Flickr photostream, as well.

All I can say is: cool. I’d fly to the left coast just to check this out. Meantime, I think we need to send a certain World Hum coeditor up to L.A. on special assignment. Jim?

The Agritourists and Locavores Will Love This

by Joanna Kakissis | 02.25.09 | 12:30 PM ET

Photo by ILoveButter via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Because it would be very satisfying to eat the vegetables you picked at that small and lovely pesticide-free farm during your vacation in, say, Crete or France or Spain and think that maybe you did a tiny little bit to save the planet from global warming.

Organic farms got a big eco-shout-out last week from the European Union’s commissioner for agriculture and rural development, Mariann Fischer Boel, who lauded them as “ammunition against the problem of climate change.” As The New York Times’ James Kanter noted, organic farming often produces fewer emissions than conventional agriculture because it uses fewer fertilizers and leaves soil more stable and better able to hold water.

I’m wondering if organic farms that double as eco-vacations spots may see an awesome branding opportunity here.

Missing Mardi Gras

by Jenna Schnuer | 02.20.09 | 10:23 AM ET

Photo by Tri-X Pan via Flickr (Creative Commons)

There’s a gaping evil awful hole in my collection of travel experiences: not only have I never been to Mardi Gras, I’ve never even been to New Orleans. (OK, while I’m admitting to things, I’ve never seen “The Godfather” either but I guess that’s an issue for another website.)

While I won’t be able to correct the situation by this year’s Mardi Gras, I plan to right the wrong come 2010. In the meantime, I’ll continue to obsess from afar. With a piece of King Cake and a ridiculously tall plastic cup filled with some sort of soul-drenching beverage by my side, I’m going to read and watch as much as I can about both Mardi Gras and New Orleans. After the jump, some of the goodies in my from-afar primer.

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The Doughnut Curse

by David Farley | 02.19.09 | 5:29 PM ET

Photo by alvxyz via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Everyone’s talking about how hamburgers have become the default economic depression meal for Americans. It’s possible we’re eating more burgers these days, but the resurgence in hamburger eating hit the American taste bud a few years before the DOW started going south.

Let me make the case for the doughnut as the Official Food of the 2009 Economic Crisis. Like dumplings and Regis Philbin, there’s a version of the doughnut in just about every culture around the world. But there’s something particularly American about those hunks of sometimes-fruit-filled fried dough. It could be the venue in which we consume doughnuts, the nostalgic, ‘50s-era quality of doughnut shops, which has quietly disappeared from our strip malls. Or maybe it’s because doughnuts have been consumed on this continent for thousands of years—archeologists recently unearthed a prehistoric doughnut.

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