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Sandwich Spotlight: Blushing Monk.

February 22, 2012

The Subject: Blushing Monk from Founders Taproom and Deli.

Growing up, I loved spending my summers in Western Michigan, along the shores of Lake Macatawa, just a short walk away from the iconographic red lighthouse marking the channel to the big lake (Michigan, herself). I’ve ventured up to the area several times as an adult in the spring and summer, to visit old friends and relatives, to relive memories. This past weekend, I found myself in Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and Holland, Michigan as a winter tourist, as a brewery tourist. With breweries — not memories — as our main destinations, I discovered parts of the cities I’d loved as a child that I didn’t know existed.

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Posted in Destination: Appetite, Michigan, Sandwich Spotlight, Table Service, The Fifty | 1 Comment »

London In A Day.

February 8, 2012

Most of what I see in travel guides and destination magazines is not for me. I know this. While looking at the photos from The World’s Most Exclusive Spas or Ten Autumn Getaways might give me a spark to get through the next week, the only way I’ll end up at a resort is by accident. (Though my two-night stay at Daluyan in Sabang was well worth the splurge. I’m not saying I don’t like these things; I’m just being realistic.) There is a category of travel writing that captures my attention, the short stay stories. The In Three Days series, published through the New York Times, is one that always catches my eye. Chances are, if I’m somewhere fabulous, I can’t afford to be there long. (I’ve spent a single day in both Seoul and Bangkok, and while the latter left me with limitations due to civil unrest, I wish I’d had a quick go-to to, well, go to.)

This is my own version of that travel guide. London in a day. Several leisurely leave-the-flat-at-eleven days preempted this flurry of activity, spawned by the realization that we were running out of time to see the things that Ben and I both wanted to see. With maps in hand, and joined by Elen we left Shoreditch before breakfast to see how many things we could see in London.

Stop One: Kensington.

We grabbed caffè Americanos to go and headed away from the sunrise, determined to witness Time and Relative Dimension in Space, otherwise known as the TARDIS of Doctor Who fame.

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Posted in Destination: Appetite, England, London, Passport Required | 3 Comments »

Delicious Transition.

January 23, 2012

One of my favorite Twitter hashtags is #firstworldproblems. For the Twitter uninitiated, it’s typically used when someone is complaining about bourgeois or tedious day-to-day issues that are not actually problems, a self-effacing nod to having the good life. So when I say that I needed a vacation from my vacation, I hereby acknowledge the ridiculousness of the statement. Nonetheless, it was true. After ten days of non-stop travel (during half of those one or both of us were sick), Ben and I needed a way to recover from our trip to London. We needed to rest. Luckily, I’d anticipated this happening, and booked a weekend stay at the Inn at Cedar Falls for the weekend after we’d return home.

This? It’s the opposite of the near panic attack I had on an over-crowded, over-heated Picadilly line where I accidentally stepped on a woman’s foot before hitting her head with my bag. And, happily, it’s only about an hour and a half from my house. In recent experiences, a trip to the destinations within the Hocking Hills of Southeast Ohio can seem like a trip to Disney World, with lines of crying children and gossipy octogenarians. And to be honest, Cedar Falls (which incidentally, has no cedars nearby), was no different.

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Posted in Columbus, Ohio, In The Neighborhood, Table Service | Leave a Comment »

Bacon Under Fire.

January 17, 2012

My first cultural food shock came in the form of fish sauce. Cambodian cuisine and I were already on shaky grounds (based on the dubious absence of cheese) when I passed a fish sauce factory. My olfactory senses singed for hours; one simple, clear and well-reasoned thought resonated: There is no possible way that anyone in their right mind would eat the stuff.

It didn’t take long for me to adapt to the cuisine and its beloved fish sauce (which tastes infinitely better than it smells). By the end of the trip, I’d almost forgotten about dairy products. Almost.

While it’s acceptable to (temporarily) question other cuisines, my own American-bred eating habits have never come under fire. Until my recent trip to England, when my choice of ordering bacon, of all things, proved to be somewhat of a cultural snafu.

It’s not like I was in Israel or something. I was in Patisserie Valerie in Leeds. They had bacon on the menu. It turns out that it wasn’t the ordering of a side of bacon that gave my server pause. It was that I ordered it to accompany a scone. Sweet and savory. “Are you sure?” she asked in amazement. In my years of eating (and ordering way too much), I’ve never actually caused the waitstaff to openly question my choices. Both the server and I were equally confused. “Yes, I want the bacon and the scone.” She shrugged and processed my weirdo order.

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Posted in England, London, Passport Required, Under The Table | 2 Comments »

Breathing Room.

January 10, 2012

After ten minutes sandwiched between all of London and her tourists in Camden Market, I realized that in at least one way, living in the Midwest is a luxury. Space. We spent an afternoon getting caught in the current of foot traffic, wandering the stalls without stopping to look closely at anything designed to attract our attention along the way. To stop would mean to be run over, or to lose a member of our party. We’d gone to Camden to meet up with Sarah, Ben’s childhood friend, and we’d brought Elen, our London hostess along with us. With only a cup of coffee as our nourishment for the day, we were starving. While the food stalls in the market were tempting, we let Sarah talk us into visiting her favorite nearby pizza place. (The crowds helped persuade us, as did the underlying fear that any food near a tourist site was likely to be crap.)

In what was to become a tradition in our London dining experience, our initial goal (in this case, pizza) was just out of reach. (This happened several times during the trip; we’d get to a bistro that a friend recommended and find that the kitchen had closed seconds prior to our arrival, or we’d arrive at our destination restaurant to learn that they could only seat us at their second location, thirty minutes away.) Camden Bar and Kitchen had changed menus and its beloved stone-baked pizzas weren’t available for brunch on Sundays. Our server—who did not approve of this very recent change in operations—tried to talk the kitchen into serving us pizzas, to no avail. Brunch it would be.

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Posted in Destination: Appetite, England, London, Passport Required, Table Service | Leave a Comment »

It’s Them, Not Me.

January 9, 2012

You can’t go home. That sounds so final, so bitter. Sometimes, you can’t go home. Or, to be more on point, sometimes home changes to a point where you don’t even recognize it. In this case, home isn’t even home. It is, instead, the place I spent most of my time in my temporary home of London, during the summer of 2000: Mezzo. A restaurant. I’ve written about it before. I’ve waxed poetically about the place to anyone who will listen, and if Facebook could somehow chronicle a Timeline for my mind (a terrifying concept), many Life Events would be connected to the place.

I knew that in the eleven years since I’d worked at the Soho restaurant, things had changed. For one, Mezzo had become Meza, and the place had changed ownership. Despite this knowledge, I couldn’t not visit it in my recent trip to London. On the first night in the city, I showed up on the doorstep of the restaurant, sans reservations and sans club attire. My super-duper fancy dining establishment had turned from the place that introduced me to mis en place and fruits de mer to what was essentially a club, a place that as a civilian, I would never enter. Instead, I was a woman on a mission: to touch base, at least emotionally, with twenty-one year-old me.

Once we walked in and looked at the menu, I had to have a stern conversation with myself: absolutely nothing would be the same and I could either enjoy my dining experience or lament the changes. The former would be way more interesting for my dining companions, so I tried to keep my commentary to a minimum. (This, of course, did not stop me from informing my first-day-on-the-job server that I once was in her shoes, but that on my first day, the building was on fire.) (True story.) (I’m sure that she didn’t care.) (I’ve turned into one of those people, the ones who show you pictures of their pets or grandchildren or announce that in this very building, eleven years ago, I ate a bowl of crème bruûlée in a stall in the server’s restroom so that the security guards wouldn’t see me stealing from the company.)

I seem to be doing it again. Right here.

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Posted in Destination: Appetite, London, Passport Required, Table Service, Under The Table | Leave a Comment »

Snapshots of Cambridge.

December 21, 2011

Take a moment from your not-quite-last-minute Christmas shopping to peruse some pictures from my day in Cambridge. And if you find yourself wondering what you can give your favorite food blog (oh please, let it be us!) for Christmas, a suggested list is below.

Cambridge had their Christmas decorations up in October. (In comparison, the Newark airport was just putting up their pink and green Christmas balloons sixteen days ago.) It seems that the British are serious about the holiday.

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Posted in Cambridge, Destination: Appetite, England, Passport Required | 1 Comment »

Old Friends.

December 20, 2011

When Ben and I planned our itinerary for the England trip this fall, most of our destinations had to do with the people we’d see. London had Elen, Sam and Sarah; Leeds was home to his sister Maria and Cambridge had Ben’s college roommate, Nate. The entire trip was a perfect vehicle to catch up with folks we hadn’t seen in ages.

While seeing Nate was the purpose of our one-day visit to Cambridge, we found ourselves wishing we’d scheduled more time to see the city, itself. It was pure joy to see history coinciding with every day life. Just one walk through made me want to spend days exploring every college, every path along the canal and, of course, every restaurant on its stone streets. (Stay tuned for a picture-only post of the sights of Cambridge.)

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Posted in Cambridge, Destination: Appetite, England, Passport Required, Table Service | Leave a Comment »

This Old Table.

December 12, 2011

I’ve got a hand-me-down dining room table in my living room that goes unused about 360 days a year. Shoved in the window, behind the couch, the table holds a plant and is the official location for my household’s Thrift Store Pile. I frequently try to envision the room without the table and its accompanying hutch and credenza that my family dumped into my house days after I signed the mortgage papers. In my imagination, the space is airy and brighter. It’s lovely. For ages, I couldn’t emotionally part with the set; it was Granny’s. It keeps me close to her. But in the past few years, I’ve realized that it’s not actually my Great Grandmother, it’s just her stuff. It’s not going to make her come alive in my house; in reality, I can’t even remember the pieces in her house. (I do, however, remember a doll toilet paper cover in her powder room quite vividly.) These days, it’s not a faux connection with the dead that keeps the dining room set in my house. Instead, it’s the idea of no giant table at all. With three leaves, the table can hold close to 14 people. And there may be nothing I love more than shoving one-too-many people in my living room for cozy dinner parties. While these gatherings are few and far between, they’re frequent enough to keep the table.

In what’s becoming something of a November tradition, I threw a soiree shortly after Thanksgiving. Borrowing from a friend of Maya’s, I loosely termed it “Friendsgiving.” I’d cook a turkey dinner that would be outside of the constraints of family Thanksgiving. My inspiration with a list of recipes compiled by Saveur.  As is my habit when cooking for large parties, I made sure that each menu item was something I’d never made before and that I’d employ at least one or two new techniques. Just to add a little pressure to the event. (Why make it easy?)

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Posted in Home Cooking | 2 Comments »

The Road To Peas.

December 7, 2011

I’m cursed. Every time I’ve traveled outside of Ohio in the past few years, I break my camera lens. The first time it happened, I was in the Philippines. Maya and I had to take a side trip to a mall in Manila for me to “barter” for a new lens. I dropped said lens in Asheville, North Carolina a year and a half later when trying to carry too much Indian food. For this most recent trip, I prepared myself. No longer would I schlep my camera around in a knapsack; if I want nice things, I have to take care of them. A blog post from Columbus photographer and design house, Genre Creative inspired me to look into carrying my beloved camera in a protective bag. Robin even lent me hers to try out for the trip.

I honestly don’t know what happened. Perhaps I opened the bag at a table to grab my journal to write something down, and failed to close it properly. Perhaps, after a little too many large glasses of wine (alcohol is legally required to be measured in England; as a result – large and small glasses of wine) I stood a little too close to a fellow bus rider who helped themselves to the contents on my back. Either way, my heart stopped when, while walking back to our friend’s place in Shoreditch, I heard my camera crash to the concrete, lens breaking away from the body. Again.

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Posted in Destination: Appetite, England, London, Passport Required, Table Service, Under The Table | 2 Comments »

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