As I'm a tad too busy to blog at the moment and have limited internet access (I've done a quick trip to Perth for my mother's birthday and Mother's Day and to see my sister and her family), why don't you drop over to my husband Terry's blog Wide angles, wine and wanderlust and check out his latest posts on restaurant reviewing (and how we deal with less than satisfactory experiences), the art of photographing chefs, and his various reflections on ragu, the real name for 'bolognese', for starters, in its most authentic form, it's made with tagliatelle, not spaghetti.
Pictured? Not ragu of course, but another divine dish from chef Rebecca Bridges at EVOO at Sky City in Darwin - a restaurant that was a joy to review and a chef who was a delight to interview and photograph.
Technicalities aside (see my previous post on Dubai as 'salad bowl' rather than 'melting pot') I was pleased to read The Dubai Melting Pot Is In the Kitchen Too in the New York Times. After an abundance of Dubai-bashing in the media recently, it was a relief to see a story by a writer who actually enjoyed himself in Dubai, and to read a well-researched piece of travel and food writing that gave such a scrumptious insight into the place. However, often it's the focused, one-subject stories that are more revealing than the all-encompassing pieces that try to do everything and don't end up covering anything particularly well at all. While cuisine, cooking and a culture's eating habits tell a lot about a place, in this case what's heartening is the fact that the story was centered, that it stayed on topic, that it rang true, and that it dug a little (although perhaps not as deep as it could have), rather than staggered all about the place, scratching here and there at the surface, and scraping together nothing but castles in the sand. During his three-day "odyssey across the culinary landscape of Dubai" writer Seth Sherwood samples an array of restaurants featuring cuisine from North Africa to the Sub-Continent, crediting Dubai’s cosmopolitan population for this culinary diversity, and writing "For devotees of food from the Arabian-Islamic world, Dubai may offer the grandest and most concentrated smorgasbord on the planet." Okay, so they're not really 'Arabian' (he probably means Arabic), but we'll forgive him because at least he was there. You see, I still can't get over Brisbane writer Elizabeth Farrelly's nonsensical piece in which she admitted that she had never been there but strangely for six months had "wanted to write about Dubai as a ruin". In stark contrast Sherwood's piece is grounded in reality: "Though the international economic crisis has raged like a sandstorm through Dubai’s office towers, financial markets and construction sites, a January visit found the sprawling restaurant scene remarkably intact." He concludes: "The upshot is a citywide food bazaar in which restaurants, high- and low-end, serve up tapaslike mezes, aubergine par excellence, fluffy couscous, tangy yogurts, endless kebabs, meats stewed with fruit, fiery arrak liqueur and honey-drenched desserts. All you need is taxi fare and a love of spices." I couldn't agree more. Although I don't always agree with his choices. Sherwood covers everything from the chic Moroccan restaurant Almaz by Momo (pictured) to the gritty Pakistani worker's eatery, Ravi, an expat favorite. The challenge of doing a story like this is that the writer only has three days to eat his way around the city and has to rely on his research abilities as much as his skills at discernment whereas we have had 11 years of dining in Dubai, with plenty of time for repeat visits. Another reason I love guidebook writer - 6 weeks in a city allows you plenty of time to return to places, to wander by on different nights, and to talk to locals. But once again - at least he was there.
For all my complaining about getting things done here, I still love Italy and after countless trips, it remains one of my most favorite countries in the world. Here are a handful of reasons why:
1. Italian cuisine: it's hard to get a bad meal in Italy. You can get some very average meals, but if you know where to go you can get truly great food - and at low prices. It's hard to say that about many country's cuisine. And then there's the regional variation, and the variety within regions! Deserving of a post on its own.
2. Italian people: passionate, philosophical and polite sums them up in our experience over the years. They're endlessly enthusiastic and animated, thoughtful about every tiny matter, and incredibly courteous. There's nothing like walking out your door only to have the person who meets you in the corridor say buonjourno! How can you not have a good day?
3. History is everywhere: it's not only in the (very fine) museums, but there are very few places in the country you can go without stumbling across medieval castle ruins or a baroque church or a Roman temple, or more recent remnants of history, such as an elegant Fascist era office block. People who are reminded of such a long history each day, live life with a certain pride.
4. Beauty surrounds you: whether it's the fresh produce at a daily market, the idyllic landscapes of the countryside or coast, or beautifully cut fashion in a store window, Italy is both blessed by beauty and the masters of producing beauty.
5. The Italian lust for life: Italy inspires a lust for life in the way few countries do and its people respond with an appropriate way. They may operate at slower pace than the rest of the EU, start work later and take longer lunch hours, and leave as early as they can on a Friday so they can get away for the weekend. But who wouldn't when there's such great food to eat, such fascinating people to meet, such an engaging life to lead, and such beauty everywhere?
By Terry Carter*
Our third memorable meal turned out to be at Michelin-starred Ristorante Il Pagliaccio. We had wanted to eat here for a while, having heard great things about the chef and glowing recommendations about the inventiveness of the menu of Anthony Genovese. Visiting for lunch, we were the only patrons there, yet we hadn't been able to get a table for two nights. Manager Daniele Montano explained that they open for lunch to keep people like us happy (he guessed we were ‘food tourists’), as well as the businessmen and politicians out to impress. To be honest, there were so many highlights to this meal it’s hard to pick out some favorites. The gnocchi with oysters and caviar was sublime. And we had the best prepared pigeon, served with peas, pea puree and mushrooms, that we'd ever had in our lives. The wines were perfectly matched and the service was warm and generous. Il Pagliaccio might translate to the weeping clown, but this meal made us weep tears of delight. Although we were a little melancholy for more after we left…
Great meals have a flow about them and great restaurants exude a certain confidence. The wines match the food well, the waiting staff work seamlessly together, and the kitchen brings out fresh ingredients cooked with care and often plenty of flair. But great meals don’t have to be as intricate and delicate as dining at Il Pagliaccio where a new wine and new taste sensations were presented with every course. They can be as simple and rustic as La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali, or more classical and refined like L'Arcangelo. When we go out to eat we’re happy with any of these three types of experiences. And when a meal clicks, it makes all the ones that don’t feel that way seem like wasted opportunities - something that really irks us when we’re working on a guidebook and blow a tonne of money on a restaurant that we ultimately can’t recommend. But while we are researching stories, to have three memorable meals in just as many days, with such a gamut of experiences, is one of the pure joys of travelling. Don’t you think? It’s one of the reasons we do what we do!
Terry Carter* is my partner and co-author.
By Terry Carter*
La Taverna dei Fori Imperiali** was casually recommended to us by our guide, Petulia, from Context while we were on our way to visit some bespoke shops, and it was another memorable stop. A modest, old-fashioned trattoria, we were instantly taken with the casual nature of the staff. ‘Dad’, who appears to do the cooking, walked through the restaurant wearing the kind of apron that generally makes the rest of the family giggle, but the food was delicious, as was the wine selection. We ordered off-menu as this generally translates to the ‘specials’. In good Italian restaurants ‘specials’ don’t mean the stuff from the back of the walk-in refrigerator that’s well past its prime, it means the dishes that are made from what was bought fresh from the market that day. We had a beautiful freshly-made caponata (a 'salad' comprised of cooked eggplant, olives, pine nuts, celery, more than a little sugar, vinegar and olive oil, with some wonderful buffalo mozzarella on the side), followed by some handmade pastas, of which a veal ragout with late-season truffles was an aromatic delight. Even a neighbouring table’s comments*** that they had to keep drinking wine to "drown out the garlic taste" of the same dish* couldn’t deter us from fighting over whether our ‘half-half’**** rule applied.
* Photographer-writer Terry Carter is my husband and co-author
** at Via Madonna dei Monte 16
*** Notes for our neighbouring table (while desperately not trying to sound like a food snob): it was truffle, not garlic that was giving off the strong aroma (costs much more, smells very different); ‘al-dente’ means ‘with bite’, this is how pasta is cooked, although the ‘bite’ varies depending whether the pasta is secca (dried) or fresca (fresh); and ‘Dante’ was a writer, so asking if a pasta is ‘chewy’ because it’s cooked ‘Dante’ is like asking to be sent to the Inferno.
**** our ‘half-half’ rule is what we use when we have two dishes we both really want to try. We eat half and then swap plates. Conditions apply and there is often a little cheating. As when one person is faking that their dish is ‘just OK’, but is secretly having a food orgasm. This is generally easily discovered by noting the facial expressions of the cheating diner.
By Terry Carter*
Given that we were not on the travel guidebook treadmill when we were in Rome recently (we were researching stories for travel magazines instead), we easily fell back into the pattern that we used to follow when we didn’t write restaurant reviews for a living. We decided to do what we love to do – eat at whatever restaurant takes our fancy rather than what fulfills editorial desires. (More on that in another post coming soon.) Our friends and people we meet on the road think that this means we’d drop into Michelin star establishments for breakfast. But that’s not the case. Dining at Michelin-starred restaurants can be stifling, stiff and often disappointing experiences (more on that soon also). We love to mix it up and we’re just as happy with a bowl of great pasta as we are with a tian of whatever served with an ingredient that I’d need to look up in a food dictionary and topped with foam of cloud essence. You get the idea… So, here are our three favorite restaurants in Rome...
* Travel writer-photographer Terry Carter is my husband and co-author.
By Terry Carter*
On our first day in Rome we dumped our bags and quickly headed out to lunch at L'Arcangelo, a classically understated yet elegant ristorante, where the quietly charming owner-sommelier Arcangelo Dandini exudes the confidence of someone who knows that the food and wine are exemplary. For example, an octopus salad with potatoes, capers and artichokes was perfection on a plate. The balance of the flavours and the amount of each ingredient were impeccable. Sometimes you’d take a mouthful of a dish and you’d just know that these ingredients were made for eachother, making me wonder why I didn’t cook more simply when we’re staying in apartments. Our rigatoni alla matriciana was one of the best pasta dishes we’d ever sampled and if the head chef is from India he’s had excellent guidance from Arcangelo, who is responsible for many of the recipes and much of what’s on the menu. The wines recommended (including the owners’ own lovely bianco) were beautifully matched and the meal flowed seamlessly, leaving us floating off giddily for a well-earned siesta. Now that’s our idea of fine dining.
* Travel writer-photographer Terry Carter is my husband and co-author (although that's my lazy photography, pictured).
Calabria is the southern Italian region that is the toe of Italy's boot. Not only is it Europe's best value destination but it has more going for it than you'd guess from the little coverage it receives in the travel press. Having just crisscrossed Calabria to research a guidebook, these are the reasons I think you need to visit:
1. Tropea: stroll the cobblestone streets of Calabria's most sophisticated seaside town in the evening and you'd be forgiven for thinking you're in a little version of Rome, for around every corner is an excellent trattoria or enoteca ran by a food-loving family. Dramatically set on a rocky headland, its elegant pastel painted palazzi are perched atop cliffs skirted by two of the region's most alluring sandy beaches. The crystal clear aquamarine waters are especially enticing when viewed from the pretty piazzas above, and the Santa Maria dell'Isola convent, pictured, is simply stunning.
2. Calabrian cuisine: not only is it spicy, tasty and rustic, it relies heavily on fresh seafood, especially swordfish, cod, squid and sea urchin, and makes splendid use of local staples like red onions, aubergines and porcini mushrooms when in season. But it's the spicy flavors we loved best, the fantastic salamis, peperoncino (peppers) and the local specialty, fiery 'nduja, a spicy pork salami paste - our favorite! (See the Bleeding Espresso blog for Calabrian food tips and recipes.)
3. Aspromonte National Park: some guidebooks suggest avoiding this breathtakingly beautiful area, which it's said is the heartland of the Calabrian mafia, however, locals love these mountains for hiking and driving and guides will happily take you on treks. If you're too scared to get out of the car then simply enjoy a low-key cruise along the lovely winding road as it snakes through thick forests of birch, fir and pine trees that frequently come together to form a shaded canopy overhead. We loved the route from Melito di Porto Salvo via Chorio and Bagaladi to Gamberie where you can take a left down the coast to Reggio Calabria; make a detour to mighty Montalto at 1955 metres.
4. Scilla: another sublime seaside resort with a charming upper town, with a castle and churches, dramatically perched on a headland high above the ocean, and atmospheric lower towns either side, one boasting old buildings jutting into the sea with al fresco restaurants sitting over the water and a port that's fascinating to visit when the fishing boats come in, while the other side has a wide sandy beach with superb seafood restaurants and lidos that are popular with Italians in summer.
5. Morano Calabro: Calabria seems to have more hilltop towns than the whole of Italy. These atmospheric medieval villages sprawl across hills and spill down mountains, and even though there's little to actually see or do, sometimes it's enough to simply gaze at their beauty from a good vantage point (see the pic of Morano that accompanies yesterday's post). The more adventurous and energetic can explore the steep narrow streets, but be prepared for both stares from locals (some villages, Morano included, are not used to foreigners) and disappointment (often the view is better from a distance). In my opinion, Morano is the most impressive of dozens of similar towns.
More to come on Calabria...
If yesterday's post didn't have you packing your bags, here are some more mouth- watering food blogs that inspire me to travel to the destinations these globe-trotting gourmets are blogging about: Traveller’s Lunchbox is the delicious work of an American living in Scotland (and married to a Spaniard) who blogs about her global dining experiences; this is another one of those scrumptious blogs with appetizing imagery, along with a fantastic list of food blogs around the world. Read her posts on Morocco, including my favorite cities, Essaouira and Marrakesh, and see if they don’t have you researching flights straight after. On Have Fork Will Travel, a fabulously fanatic foodie blogs about eating well and eating out (primarily) in the UK. After dipping into this blog I feel as if I’ve spent a week in London dining at all the best restaurants – without having spent a pound! A few things I love about this blog: its author believes mashed potato to be the best food in the world and has a ‘Mash Hall of Fame’; its sub-title is “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well” (how true, only I'd add 'travel well' too); and this blogger will hop on a plane and fly to New York for one night for a meal. I also love Desert Candy, a Middle East-driven cooking blog by an American who writes from Damascus, New York and Baltimore, and generously shares her scrummy recipes; and the delectable Italian-focused Lucullian, by a Swede living in a village in Tuscany. Do food blogs inspire you to travel too? I'd love to hear about your favorites! Pictured is a Thai lunchbox provided by our guide on a recent four day trek in Thailand - opening the little rattan boxes was a delight and the the contents were as delicious as you can imagine!
Food blogs inspire me to travel. Especially those by globetrotting foodies blogging about their eating experiences around the world, and expats who blog about their culinary discoveries in their adopted cities. As I’ve been blogging about our Thailand travels, it’s apt that I share some of my favourite Asian-focused blogs: Bangkok-born San Franciscan Pim blogs on Chez Pim about her global culinary adventures, reviewing everything from Asian street food to European Michelin star restaurants; she has scrumptious guides to eating in San Francisco, London, New York, Paris, and Spain, and her Bangkok guide includes blogs on my favorite Thai snacks, pork crackling and Kanom Krok. Singaporean ‘Chubby Hubby’ blogs equally deliciously about his gourmet globetrotting experiences with his wife, with mouth-watering photography; his recent blogs on Bhutan will have you adding that destination to your list. Asian-based blogs with food photography to make me hungry include the scrummy-looking Real Thai by Bangkok-based Austin Bush who blogs about his best eating experiences in Bangkok and other places; the appetizing Eating Asia by a Malaysian-based food writer-photographer team, which includes especially luscious photography; the ravenous-making Rambling Spoon by Karen Coates, an Asia-based correspondent for Gourmet magazine, who is ‘traveling the world by mouth’ (Karen also has a long list of food blogs I’m going to have to check out!); and Hanoi-based blog Sticky Rice about yummy eating experiences in Vietnam. Take a read and see if they don't make you want to buy a plane ticket somewhere. (This pic is mine, of our typically scrumptious, congee-like breakfasts while in Thailand.)
Food inspires me to travel. No doubt about it. Does it do that for you? Whether I’m flicking through a food and travel magazine, drooling over my husband’s food photography, or just taking a look at my own food snaps from our travels, mouthwatering images just make me want to go! Take this pic of Mieng Kham, a deliciously tangy Thai appetiser made with betel leaves, dried shrimps, limes, peanuts, palm sugar, coconut, and birds-eye chillies (hope I’ve got that right!). It’s not something you’ll typically see at your neighbourhood Thai restaurant in Dubai, London, Sydney, San Francisco, or wherever, as Betel leaves can be hard to find. Therefore it’s always the first dish we’ll order our first meal in Bangkok. It’s the dish we most reminisce about. It's the one we most look forward to. And it's the dish that inspires me to find an excuse to return to Thailand.
We generally don't like guides - mainly, it's their bad jokes, the tedious history lessons, the time-keeping mentality, and a certain arrogance, plus we've had a few bad experiences (one of which involved our first visit to one of the world's great wonders, Petra, being ruined by the guide). However, we visited several food markets in Thailand with guides and they were all excellent - knowledgeable, enthusiastic, charming, and had excellent relationships with the stallholders. Once we made it clear to the guides that we'd been to food markets in Thailand many times before, we knew our food, and were familiar with Thai food, it took the whole experience to another level. We got to ask lots of questions, to find out what all those icky unidentifiable things actually were, to learn their Thai names, how they're cooked and eaten, and so on. And by doing so, we learnt an extraordinary amount about the Thai people, their cuisine, and their culinary habits. And we tried lots of food! Admittedly, we weren't as brave as Bourdain. We didn't need to try deep friend crickets or whitchetty grub-like worms, but we tasted a lot of food, a lot more than we'd try if we were by ourselves. We're hooked. From now on, we're going to hire a guide-translator to visit every food market in each new place we visit. And maybe some of the markets we're familiar with too. Who knows what we might discover? And who we might meet. We probably wouldn't have met this friendly fishmonger and had a lesson on Thai fish-scaling if we had have been on our own!
Food markets are one of the ultimate joys of travel, aren't they? Whenever we visit a new place one of the first things we do is visit a local fresh food market. They're a microcosm of the society. Markets give you a sensoral introduction to the culture, an insight into its everyday life, a taste of the 'personality' of the place, and some local flavour - quite literally. For us one of the real pleasures is the food itself. And while we like being able to identify the familiar (Oh, they have that here?!), we love nothing more than discovering some unusual ingredient or exotic fruit - and Thailand has plenty of those. And in Thailand, there's the added delight - or horror depending on how you look at it - of seeing slimy creatures swimming around in big bowls of water, ugly frogs that give the cane toad a run for its money, big dishes of deep fried insects, and other icky unidentifiable things bouncing about in plastic bags. The more markets assault your senses the better. Colours so bold they bowl you over, sounds so raucous you're covering your ears, aromas so heady you have to hold your nose... bring it on!
I love to discover incongruities when I travel, as I told you. Like the coffee-seller using a shiny Italian espresso machine in Aleppo's medieval souq, I like this image of two guys working a Turkish doner kebap stand in Beijing. It wasn't something I expected to see in downtown Beijing. For me, it was out of context, that's all. And there lies its disarming charm. For me, food is another source of joy when I travel. And I enjoy eating 'foreign' foods in countries to find out how that culture has adapted and reinterpreted another culture's dish to suit its taste. Although nothing beats trying food that's typical of a country's cuisine, those dishes that are representative of a culture and identity, that its people are proud of, that are served with love. I'll never forget my first time in Paris. My friend Sandrine invited us to stay at her place and we arrived to a breakfast of warm croissants, fresh from the bakery. Sure we'd had croissants in Sydney, even in Abu Dhabi, before. But these were Parisian croissants our French friend was proudly serving us in Paris. And to us they were the most delicious, flaky, buttery croissants we'd ever eaten. I can smell them now.
As I'm a tad too busy to blog at the moment and have limited internet access (I've done a quick trip to Perth for my mother's birthday and Mother's Day and to see my sister and her family), why don't you drop over to my husband Terry's blog Wide angles, wine and wanderlust and check out his latest posts on restaurant reviewing (and how we deal with less than satisfactory experiences), the art of photographing chefs, and his various reflections on ragu, the real name for 'bolognese', for starters, in its most authentic form, it's made with tagliatelle, not spaghetti.
