View of a rooftop
Following murals are from rooftop of Museo Del Juguete Antiguo. This was a bit of a pleasant surprise, no one had really mentioned that the local artists had adopted the rooftop. We just noticed someone walking up, above the topmost floor of the museum, followed them and found the collection.
View from a rooftop
Following picture are from rooftop of Museo Del Juguete Antiguo. Some of these photos are reminiscent of rooftop views in Old Delhi.
Bugs? yum!
Limosneros in Centro Historico that serves ant pupae and beetles among other non-insect-y traditional cuisine.
Upscale bar with some lovely selection of mezcal.
Hmmm….lunch time mezcal. Served in a traditional dried hull of a fruit (calabash).
Salt with toasted ground grasshoppers and sweet lemon to cleanse your palate in between the mezcal sips. A friend had mentioned that toasted grasshopper legs scratch your throat going down! But in ground form, I could not taste anything aside from a spicy salt.
Escamoles – smoked ant pupae with epazote (a very distinctive herb), ayocote (a specific variety of ayocote bean, originally from oaxaca), humo de canela (cinnamon smoke). Escamole was served in a glass container with smoke inside.
Make yourself a taco (these were homemade) with the escamoles and add some spicy salsa. The escamoles look a little like plump version of rolled oats, a little sticky, somewhat chewy, a little funky tasting. It can be acquired taste like blue cheese.
Roasted beetles on top of cheese blocks wrapped in squash blossoms served with a couple of difference sauces. The beetles looked a little scary and I remembered my friend’s warning about legs scratching your throat going down. And I was worried about any goo-y secretion in my mouth once I bit down. But in reality, it was hollow and crispy and tasted like a mild nut. Overall, both thumbs up!
Dulceria de Celaya in Mexico City
Dulceria de Celaya, founded in 1874, is a traditional sweet shop in Centro Historico district.
Fried and glistening with syrup.
Various sweetened fruits. Reminded me of “Petha” from Agra, the translucent sweet candy made from a variety of white pumpkin. The pumpkin is soaked in chemical lime before cooking in syrup. Sounds strange when described but tastes like Pâte de fruit.
Doughnuts
Almond milk and coconut concoction and guava Pâte de fruit.
Almond and coconut pâte de fruit, in a sugar cooked lime.
Best steak at Mercado de Medellin
Los Canarios at Mercado de Medellin was a recommendation from New York Times from “36 Hours in Mexico City”. Since 1968, Los Canarios has been serving grilled meats, like sliced filet mignon at price of a plate of taco!
Medellin is a vibrant colorful non-touristy marketplace with a neighborhood vibe.
Tasty black beans.
Steak with cactus and onions.
Trio of stunning salsas.
Backdrop of sizzling meats and chopping action.
Taste of new fruits in Mexico City
Black sapote. You have to eat them when they get really ripe and squishy.
A dessert soup of black sapote and orange juice at Contramar.
Granadilla (fruit of the plant Passiflora ligularis). When ripe and ready to eat, the fruit feels hollow and the outer surface is brittle.
Granadilla on the inside. The little jelly like kernels stick to each other gently. They are easy to scoop out with a spoon. The individual kernels burst in your mouth releasing a lightly sweet and refreshing nectar. The seeds are crunchy and somewhat tart.
El Cardenal in Centro Histórico
Be prepared for a 40-60 min wait or even longer. It would have been wonderful to try out all their dishes to find a few personal favorites. In our sampling, the mole sauce turned out to be stunning.
Fresh Oxacan cheese sauteed in butter, wrapped in zucchini blossoms, onions and strips of green chili and baked in banana leaves. Served with tacos. The fresh cheese is lightly salted, crumbly and not unlike taste of Indian paneer. Zucchini blossoms do not have a strong taste but they add prettiness to the dish. Served with an excellent green salsa and fresh made corn tortilla. Overall, a refreshing start of the meal. We had sufficient leftover that we brought back and had for breakfast the next day.
A stunning mole sauce with chicken leg. Mole had several varieties of chili, chocolate, spices, and peanuts. Chicken was cooked separately and mole was ladled on top.
Fall off the bone beef shank cooked in traditional spices. This was tasty but not unusual like the mole. Perhaps my own familiarity with south Asian spices made this particular dish less unusual. Again there was sufficient leftover that we brought back and had as part of breakfast tacos!
Los Danzantes in Coyoacán
Los Donzantes came after the visit to Casa Azul. Along with excellent food, this was our first experience with Mezcal. It turns out that Donzantes brand is one of the more popular mezcal brands. Mezcal is a whisky like alcohol made exclusively from agave cacti. It is almost always smoky. The variety of agave results in other particular flavors. Smoothness depends on the distillation and maturation process. It is sipped like a good brandy and between sips, you can cleanse your palate with salt – typically you get sliced sweet limes to suck down the salt. Grasshopper salt is traditional but not served as default. I would have to guess that the price of mezcal is proportional to the wildness of the agave variety (hence hard to produce in large batches) and romance around the brand is based on the remoteness of the distillery.
Up until Donzantes, my familiarity with agave was the grand flowering process. Near our old home, our neighbor’s agave, which was nearly as tall as me, bloomed over course of an year. My best guess is that it was Agave Americana variety, the flowering stalk was as tall as a telephone pole. The plant died after the flowering process (their reproductive fate) and gave birth to a dozen small ones. I have always loved cacti, but after tasting mezcal, I am elevating my love for agave to the same level as my love for elephants. And please don’t head towards extinction, I promise I will drink wild mezcal in moderation.
Los Donzantes happens to be next to the beautiful Fuente de Los Coyotes in Jardin Centenario. So, in addition to their excellent Mezcal, al fresco dining without smoke and gasoline to flavor your meal is actually feasible here.
Fuente de Los Coyotes in Jardin Centenario
Early start to Mezcal, this is one of Donzantes reposado house brand.
Early finish to Mezcal!
Real tamales in Mexico City
Monasterio Tamales is a small food stall a few blocks from Frida Kahlo Museum. Perfect place to lunch before queuing up for the museum visit. And oh, these are the genuine article – fluffiness that can’t be brought about by “healthy” fats. A lunch that cost us a grand total of USD $4 for four tamales.
Savory tamales
Sweet tamales? I didn’t know this concept existed. But it makes perfect sense in hindsight.
We had ordered shrimp but I think they either ran out of shrimp that day or gave us a vegetarian option.
Cuitlacoche – famous tar-like corn fungus. We had our first taste of this fungus at a hole in the wall in LA. Since then, we have ordered Cuitlacoche anywhere we have seen it on the menu.
Mole
Guava (Guayaba) – this was surprisingly yummy. They had basically taken the guava pulp and discarded the seeds.
El Parnita in Mexico City
El Parnita was our first meal in Mexico City. Lunch in Mexico City commences around 2 pm – like in Barcelona. We arrived before the restaurant had opened. But the place filled up soon enough. Dogs and kids were welcome – we had two young babies on one side and a Mexican hairless dog on the other. Several other multi-generational families were present, this place is clearly popular with locals.
We started lunch with guanabana juice and ordered several tacos. Aside from the traditional Tlacoyos, the tacos were served on blue corn tortillas. Garbanzo Bertha was perhaps the most unusual although given the influence of lebanese cooking in carnitas, the addition of hummus shouldn’t have been surprising. Pibil sauce on fish felt unusual but to be honest, I have only had pibil once and that too home made following Robert Rodriguez’s puerco pibil recipe nearly a decade ago – from the DVD extra on Once Upon A Time in Mexico!
Our Google translator app managed to translate only 10% of menu but I think we would have been happy even if we had ordered randomly.
Great day outside
Eclectic and cozy inside
A breakfast and a lunch in San Francisco’s Little Italy
Mama’s on Washington Square. Even for a mid week breakfast, there was a long queue outside.
Mama’s screwdriver is made with grapefruit juice and soju. On yeah, a morning screwdriver is the best way to celebrate middle of the week time off from work. This is completely no-nonsense drink that would provide a buzz long enough to last the trek up to Coit tower.
Mama’s Benedicts. Tasty! Enough energy to last the trip to Coit tower and back and then slump on the luncheon chair at Tony’s Napoletana.
Menu at Tony’s Pizza Napoletana. When pizza appears on the menu along with the oven temperature, one has to take it seriously, right?
The gluten free. You could ask, why one even bothers. There is something in the aroma of bread and cheese that is simply put, irresistible. Overall verdict, the dough is not as good as Mariposa’s.
Chantal Guillon – land of macroon wonder
 Chantal Guillon in Palo Alto Downtown |
 Store front |
 Blood orange macaroons |
 Guava macaroons |
Freedom Wings
Osmanthus in Oakland was our pick for lunch after the naturalization ceremony in Oakland’s Paramount Theater. Pizza is what we would have celebrated with but with the gluten intolerant microbiota, we decided on Asian cuisine instead. And a modern pan Asian restaurant to celebrate the occasion was perhaps even apt. Of the 1097 fellow Americans who took the oath representing 55% of world’s nations (yes, a whopping total of 109 nations!) over two third were formerly asian.
Oakland, thank you for supporting restaurants like Osmanthas (and Juhu Beach Club and Asmara and …) . And thank you for restoring the Paramount theater and hosting this celebration there. It is an important milestone in our lives and it is extraordinary to share the experience with 1000 others in this stunning old Art Deco theater. It was a solemn occasion with speeches and presidential videos (w/ camera flashes and twittering and cheering!). Throw in 15 minutes of Charlie Chaplin on the big screen next time or even Walt Disney cartoons and lets us feel the true glory of this beautiful venue, Might even lull the crying babies!
Chicken wings lunch plate with honey ginger glaze.
Dry-fried chicken wings lunch plate with sichuan peppercorns
“Ms Grant” – a gin, ginger, lime and castilian bitters cocktail and “Plum Manhattan” – a rye, vermouth, umeshu, sour cherry bitter cocktail.
Also the basa fish with fermented black beans and “kiang ton” spareribs. Every dish was done expertly with the usual play of textures. Dishes were served with this delicious Japanese style pickled cabbage that elevated this simple vegetable to fine cuisine. The flavors in their fermented beans and sichuan peppers were memorable enough that my taste buds can recall with clarity after 24 hours!
Thinking about the wings now, I would say that only thing that could have made the chicken wings better is if they were Pok-Pok’s. But at the time, after a wonderful glass of Plummy Manhattan, I was happy.
Morimoto in Napa
Morimoto at Napa, located at the town center. Pleasing decor. Particularly like the grape decor on the walls.
This is Chef’s selection of sashimi.
Crab legs with a mayo and roe spicy sauce. This is Morimoto’s most popular dish.
 Some more sushi. |
 Rest of the plate which is an egg custard. |
Tofu mousse with blueberry compute and sorbet.
Wild rose – pretty to look at, smells heavenly and great to eat.
Wild rose in my yard.
Check rose for flavor
Pick roses to make about 2 cups of petals. Clean petals by swishing in cold water. Watch out for small insects. Add to one cup of water, one cup of sugar, jelling agent and juice of one lemon. Cook for about 20 minutes and chill.
Rose jam with cheese. Also nice with yogurt. The rose petals are chewy in the jelly.
Rose jam with cottage cheese and mangoes
What is a doswaffle?
Last weekend, we went back to one of our favorite Bay Area restaurants, Juhu Beach Club (JBC). Last time we ate here, we could still eat gluten and we were impressed by the pavs. This time, we opted for the JBC Fried Chicken n Doswaffle – gluten free! Waffles were made with dosa batter – fantastic concept, yes? And the fried chicken were dipped in lentil batter.
Juhu Beach Club Fried Chicken and Doswaffle
Starting 2015 with lunch at Chez Panisse Cafe
Nibbled at the edges of this excellent sourdough, thus convincing ourselves that we were managing to stay on the right side of our gluten quota.
“Bob Cannard’s chicories with crème fraîche, ginger, roasted beets, and chives”. Ginger-y creme fraîche! Bless Alice Waters. Chez Panisse salads are to die for.
“Shaved winter vegetable salad with Dungeness crab and citrus vinaigrette”. Mildly citrus-y vinaigrette with perfectly crunchy carrot and fennel shavings.
“Fish and shellfish fritto misto with snap pea and cabbage salad, cress, and saffron mayonnaise”. The fries felt like eating cloud! What? Each bite was feather lite crispiness on the outside and melt in your mouth on the inside. Mayo was made even more indulgent by the addition of saffron. The tart cabbage salad with green and white florets of cauliflower and peppery baby cress provided an excellent counterpoint .
“Black truffle and ricotta cheese soufflé with roasted Belgian endive, cardoons and cress.” Don’t let the picture fool you, this soufflé was like a puff of air in its lightness. Cardoons and endive were both braised and roasted.
“Bittersweet chocolate custard with crème Chantilly and almond biscotti” with sightglass espresso.
Bhut Jolokia @ Dzükou tribal kitchen
Dzükou tribal kitchen in Hauz Khas market.
Bhut Jolokia or Naga Mircha (Bengali/Naga name) or Ghost chili pepper – call it what you want but it is the second hottest chili pepper in the world. And Dzükou tribal kitchen in Hauz Khas market serves chutneys from the chili. Yum!
Coconut filled rice crepes, a Bengali delicacy
Pati Shaptar Pithe/Pitha or coconut filled rice crepes. Pati means a mat, and shapta means simple in Bengali.
Grate raw coconut (or get frozen unsweetened grated coconut and thaw), about two cups, add sugar to taste and stir fry until golden brown. If you wish, you can add a tablespoon of raisins and a tablespoon of toasted and chopped cashew nuts or slivered almonds.
Pitha comes in various shapes. These are the simplest. To prepare the crepe batter, to a cup of rice flour, add a pinch of salt, and a tablespoon of sugar. Add milk, 2% or full fat preferably, until the batter consistency is like crepe. Heat up a non-stick pan. If needed, you can wipe it down with a buttered cloth/brush. Follow cooking temperature regimen for a crepe.
 Pour about 1/4 cup of batter and roll it around on the hot pan to form a thin crepe. |
 As the crepe cooks, it starts to lift off the edges. |
 Add two tablespoons of filling. Optionally, form the filling in the palm of your hand in shape of a small spheroid. |
 Roll in form of a fat cigar. |
Keep aside while you prepare the rest. These can be eaten warm or at room temperature. To take them to the next level (i.e. not simple), you can bake them in condensed milk as well but they do become heavy. Drizzling some condensed milk on top while not traditional can be an excellent substitute.
During this trip to India, I am seeing some new sweets in Bengal including baked rasogolla (boiled cheese balls dunked in sugar syrup) , Kolkata’s famous sweet and chana pora (literal translation for roasted cheese), a dish very similar to cheese cake.
Chai by river Hooghly
 Chai-wallah. Super sweet milky chai with hints of ginger. What is special are these earthen cups in which the chai is served. The pots are size of a child’s fist. So even though the sweetness of the tea hurts your teeth, it lasts only a few tiny sips. Tea gets a slightly earthen flavor when served in these pots. |
 I remember the pots being nicely proportioned back in the days. |
Post Peter Cat, we decided to do a family outing to Outram ghat and threw in a boat ride. Last similar trip was in 2008. We had desperately needed the exercise but instead our boatman got some. The ghats along the river are full of untapped tourism potential but as a third generation Calcuttan, I have now finally given up hope. However, it never fails to provide some elements of interest. During this particular boat ride, we drew close to Prinsep ghat and found a long haired baul singer entertaining the crowd. When he got up for an ovation, we realized that he was a hipster to boot. We found remnants of bisarjan, a long legged goddess, dangling by her ankles at one of the canal bridges.
Peter Cat of Kolkata
Peter Cat of Kolkata, started in sixties, it is unclear how much has changed since. My brother is pretty convinced that absolutely no changes have occurred in last 2 decades.
A mindless concoction of a bloody mary. Completely avoidable.
Sizzler. This is not on the menu but clientele seemed to know of it. Various kababs, liver, shrimp, paneer doused in a creamy sauce. Quite nice.
Tandoori shrimp, my favorite this time. The shrimps were amazingly tender and disappeared rapidly.
Spicy chicken liver. I got some back home to try with the Kentucky bourbon.
Chelokabab plate. The sheek kabab was over spiced but the tandoori skewers were tender and juicy. We had a lot of left over tandoori chicken which came back home – to be converted into tikka masala.
Singapore Sling
Should have had one at Raffles Hotel but had one at LongBeach@Dempsey which was awful to say the least. So I had another one on the flight out. And the one on the flight was better than the one at LongBeach!
According to Singapore Airlines menu, Singapore Sling was created in 1915 at the Long Bar of Raffles Hotel and is a concoction of dry gin, Dom Benedictine, orange liqueur and cherry brandy and shaken up with lime and pineapple juices and a dash of Angostura bitters and Grenadine. Does this have the potential of being sublime like a good gin-martini? Possibly not.
Salut to Wah Kee Big Prawn Noodles
We had to wait only a few minutes for our $5 bowls at Wah Kee Big Prawn Noodle shop. Karma, baby!
This little hawker shop at Pek Kio serves noodles and broth just the way I like it. A bowl of ambient temperature flat rice noodles was served with crunchy bits, bean sprouts and spicy oil, like dan-dan noodles. A separate bowl of hot delicious shrimp broth came with two juicy jumbo shrimps. When served separately, the noodles and broth can be independently perfected and enjoyed.
Every time I am outside of the cocoon of SF Bay Area, I am humbled at the sight of hard working people in their 70s and 80s. At Wah Kee, grandfather meticulously puts the shrimp broth together, one bowl at a time. Shrimps are cooked after the order is placed. Grandmother serves the customers, and puts together the noodle bowl. She is supposedly a bit moody but we did not see any evidence of that. She helped us choose the right type of noodles (gluten free) and afterwards when we went up to thank her, she shook our hands and gave us a lovely smile.
It was too muggy to bring a mobile phone to the food center but if you want to see photos, check out the links below.
- Here is where we got our recommendation from.
- Another foodie whose site I must wade through before our next trip to Singapore.
For coffee we recommend Cambridge Coffee Stall – serving rich coffee made cowboy style and served with a small tsp of condensed milk.
LongBeach @ Dempsey
House specialty prawn. Shelled and batter fried shrimps topped with salted egg. The salted egg bits were crunchy and about the size of sesame seeds.
House specialty, a 1.8 kilo black peppered Sri Lankan crab – about the size of my head. The pepper flavor danced around in my mouth while I spent better part of an hour devouring the giant on the plate. Only a few women at the establishment were using bibs. Several of the patrons, like us, were using all available appendages and implements in sight – tourists like us perhaps. Someone at the table across us was eating his crab with chopsticks!
After all that effort, we were hungry enough to share a durian pudding which arrived at the table promptly. Some presentation flair involving basic chemistry was involved – the bowl of pudding was situated on a tumbler containing blue liquid that emitted vigorous white vapors. The pudding was creamy and exuded a super strong durian flavor. My husband fondly describes durian as jackfruit flavored with (two week old sweaty gym socks that has been dowsed in kerosene.)
On our way back from LongBeach, our cab driver mentioned the urban legend surrounding the gigantic size of Sri Lankan crabs.
Katanashi at Boat Quay
Boat Quay is touristy but to be honest it is really pleasant to sit by the river and eat. Singapore, like other warm weather countries is hot and humid even in November and the hawker stalls do get a bit too muggy. We have a general motto – when in doubt, eat Japanese cuisine – it paid off in choosing Katanashi.
We were early at Boat Quay. We whetted our appetite by walking from one end of Boat Quay to other, crossing over to the other side of the river and walking back. In spite of all that walking about, we were early and decided to seat ourselves at a table by the river. We could hear the staff starting their shift with pledges of hospitality and customer service. Within a short time of lunch opening, the restaurant filled up with office goers. It emptied up equally quickly. It was great to watch others rushing about their lives while we were lazing about!
Katanashi at Boat Quay, prides itself in really fresh ingredients, apparently eggs so fresh that one could eat them raw!
Although at lunch time, only beer is served. Damn gluten sensitivity. I wish I could have ordered sake. Cold green tea just wasn’t the right substitute. Perhaps it was for the best, I was only a foot away from the river.
Scorched mackerel. Scorching happens at the table, the fish is marinated in vinegar, served with freshly grated horseradish, scallions and soy.
Signature dish, curried slow cooked beef tongue. Served with rice and picked cucumbers.
Korean style salmon served on a bowl of rice, with fried egg, fresh okra and pickled cucumbers.
Locomotoring 