Posts from the ‘International Intrigue’ Category

Jun 28

Chain Links: There’s the Beef

Brusque Coney Island customers are making young Beijing recruits at Nathan’s cry.

Wendy's showed up in Moscow with "sexy" girls in pigtails and striped stockings. What would Dave Thomas think? Times have changed since Wendy's was able to use Soviet fashion as a gag.

The Ivy, London’s celebrity-clogged restaurant, recently opened a branch in Dubai. In a mall, of course. Will there be Dover sole? Yes, for 180 AED (approximately $49) which isn’t a horrible deal by NYC standards.

IHOP will be spreading throughout the Middle East. It just won't be the same without bacon and breakfast sausage.

MOS Burger’s test run in Brisbane has gone so well that the Japanese company thinks it can expand into the US, Canada and Europe. Do keep in mind that Hawaii has already seen MOS Burger come and go.

Carl’s Jr. is now in Canada.

Photo: Igor Tabakov/Moscow Times

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Jun 17

Chain Links: Pizza Pizza Pizza

If you need any further evidence of NYC’s third world-ness, witness the brand new two-story Dairy Queen in Saudi Arabia. How can the Middle East have the largest DQ in the world (with two more locations on the way) when we live Blizzard-free here?

If Subway can do it, why not Quiznos? The sandwichery will be moving into Brazil, India and Kuwait this year and has its eye on more than 40 other countries.

Domino’s isn’t doing so well in China because it’s not a country of cheese-lovers.

It’s hard to believe that Yum! Brands, parent to Pizza Hut and KFC, hasn’t ventured into Argentina yet. Based on my experience at Guerrin, porteños are the opposite of the Chinese. No amount of cheese is enough.

More pizza. California Pizza Kitchen broke out of its Golden State confines long ago, and Taiwan is the chain’s latest geographic target. China already has CPK, and cheese-wary or not, they do have many pizzas we don’t. Red curry duck? Roast duck? I want the pork belly with mustard greens and cilantro.

Because the British vacation in Florida so much, Pollo Tropical might just succeed in the UK.

Kuwait’s first Pinberry has become “the number one Pinkberry in the world.

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May 10

Ordering Tacos and Chalupas in Spain

First it was Berlin getting real tacos, now it’s Paris. Soon, all of the European capitals will be rife with corn tortillas and salsa (and carrying on the fine tradition of websites that don’t do anything).

The Caribean Company, serving “ensaladas exoticas” and peculiar spelling, was in the mini mall only one block from my apartment in San Sebastián. I couldn’t justify a visit when only staying in town for one week. A few more days, though, and I would’ve caved– if only to see if they called tacos tacos.

Most of us know that tortillas are eggy potato omelets in Spain. I can deal with that. Tacos, it turns out, mean something very different, though.

Cross-sectioned slices of octopus tentacles are called tacos.

This, a bacalao-based pintxo, is called a taco.

Best I can gather is that taco in Spain’s Spanish is akin to a plug.

Wait till Taco Bell finds out that the mushroom and langoustine fritter on the left is a txalupa, a.k.a. chalupa.

I also saw a chalupa in San Sebastián’s Naval Museum (my attempt at squeezing in culture–cheap, senior citizen culture–on the last day). It’s just Spanish for a small wooden boat, which isn't what's pictured on the ticket above.

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Apr 26

Chain Links: I Say Rice and Beans, You Say Basmati and Dahl

Peruvian chefs are in demand in South America and many of the hot ticket restaurants in Quito have one. Partners in Ecuador’s branch of Astrid y Gastón, celebrity chef Gastón Acurio’s upscale chain, also own the local T.G.I. Friday’s and Pizza Hut franchises. I wonder how our soon-to-open La Mar will fare.

I don’t imagine there will be Peruvian chefs at the new Carl’s Jr. opening in Panama City, the country’s first branch.

American franchises haven’t done so well down under. Ben & Jerry’s hopes to change that.

As the American chain barrage continues in India, adaptations are being made. Pollo Tropical’s rice and beans may morph into basmati and dahl, flatbreads will find a place at Wing Stop, Wendy’s will lose the beef—and that’s just the beginning.

German fast food chain, Wienerwald will be opening in Romania. Chicken appears to be their specialty.

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Apr 20

The Latest In American-Chinese Relations

In what some might call a ballsy move, Panda Restaurant Group’s Chairman Andrew Cherng may soon bring the food court staple to China. I’ve been wracking my brain for a US equivalent, but am coming up short. MOS Burger is the closest I can come up with, though they closed their only US location in barely American Hawaii back in 2005.

Maybe crazy is more apt than ballsy. Andew Cherng also thinks you can eat caring and that it’s more important than food.

An American reporter for The New Yorker hitches a ride on a cram-as-many-sights-as-possible-in-one-week Chinese bus tour of Europe. The itinerary is exhausting and Chinese food is the only cuisine consumed from Paris to Luxembourg. Local food is ruled out because the pacing is too leisurely and according to the tour guide “If you eat Western food too fast, you’ll get an upset stomach.” Perhaps this is the flipside to our nonsensical “If you eat Chinese food, you’ll be hungry an hour later” belief.

Photo from <3 Yen

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Apr 12

Chain Links: Skinny Pirates

What is it with D.C.? The nation’s capitol got Nando’s first and now the Asian Chipotle, ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen, will open there this summer. I don’t have high hopes, but would be happy if their dishes weren’t over 1,000 calories.

No one will care but me (not even my friend who lives in Woodbridge) but Bahama Breeze, the boozy Caribbean concept from Darden, is coming to Woodbridge, NJ, a town I find myself in at least once a month. Up until now, the nearest location was in Cherry Hill, which I only know because we had the restaurant as a client during my brief 2006 stint at a PR agency and a bunch of unbearable women in my department took a field trip that I only got out of because I had to go to Wales for my sister’s wedding. Two hours each way by car service, and I probably would’ve quit on the spot instead of waiting one more month. I probably wouldn't been forced to drink a Skinny Pirate (Captain Morgans and Diet Coke) though I wouldn't say no to a wood-grilled chorizo slider.

P.F. Chang’s is going to Canada. They may as well.

Turkey just opened its first Carl’s Jr. in the Cevahir Shopping Mall. The mall appears to already have Popeye’s, Starbucks, McDonald’s, KFC, Subway, Krispy Kreme, Sbarro and Pizza Hut (it doesn’t look like the Turkish have gone Chinese with the salad bars yet).

Everyone wants to break into India, including Pollo Tropical, Rita’s Water Ice, Applebee’s, Johnny Rockets, Wendy’s, Arby’s, Carl’s Jr., Crepes and Coffee, Moe's Southwest Grill, Carvel and Denny’s. The latter will have menus “stripped free of beef and pork,” which makes me very concerned that Mumbai will never experience Moons Over My Hammy.

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Apr 7

Chain Links: Snobs Unite

It’s touchy—and humorous—business when Pulitzer Prize winners review chain restaurants. I should point the delusional Carrabba’s commenter who said I was “the snobbiest restaurant reviewer ever” to Jonathan “I will always be the snob” Gold’s take on Olive Garden.

I love a good debunking, so I was happy to hear that the Mediterranean diet is a myth and that everyone on the region is fat and 75% of Greeks are overweight. I was more happy, though, to learn about the existence of Roadster Diner, an American-themed chain in Beirut. Why can’t cheese fries coexist with hummus and grilled eggplant?

Nando’s, the South African grilled chicken chain that’s popular in much of the world, (I ate at, but never blogged about the one in Penang) is reportedly going to expand in the US beyond its three measly D.C.-area locations. Where? That’s not revealed.

Apparently, there is a South African restaurant called 10 Degrees South in Atlanta that could be turned into in a national chain if one of the founders of Houston’s has anything to do with it. Will piri piri be the new chipotle?

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Apr 5

A True Ice Cream Sandwich

Sandwiches. Are we tired of them yet? Things stuffed between bread seem to be getting an awful lot of attention lately. (Maybe I’m just cranky because I’ve been trying to limit my bread intake.) My attention did get grabbed by Saveur’s inclusion of my favorite non-savory sandwich that I’ve never actually eaten, the loti.

It’s one thing to plan a vacation to somewhere steamy and tropical. Looking at outdoor food photos, beforehand, running all over town tracking down never-seen-in-NYC delights sounds fun. In the swamp-like reality, if you pass a guy selling rainbow ice cream sandwiches and have the intention of returning later, you will not because a ten minute walk in 90-degree-humidity knocks the food blogger right out of you. Irrational decisions are made. Regrets are felt back in the relative cool comfort of a squashed A train.

Even if it’s just dyed white bread and ice cream, I love the looks of this treat. Please don’t take my artificial coloring away. Normally, it’s not open-faced topped with numerous scoops of ice cream like in the above photo, but served with the bread folded over a rectangular slab.

Photo credit: Todd Coleman/Saveur

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Apr 3

National Republic of Food

There is a new site called Food Republic that’s messing with my mind (so is Eataly's soon-to-open La Birreria, which I always read as birrieria and get excited that NYC's getting a Mexican goat soup restaurant) not because it’s yet one more thing Marcus Samuelsson has been dipping his colorful sneaker-shod toes into, but because Food Republic is the name of Singaporean chain of themed food courts that I love. Really love. A food court with a library motif in a massive mall? I fantasize about making like those Thai girls who brought BonChon to Bangkok and opening a franchise in NYC.

Of course, serious food-lovers and expats, in particular, hate these soulless, overpriced, contemporary adaptations of hawker stalls. This week, CNNgo wound up commenters with a “Singapore’s Top 5 New Hawker Spots” post where three of the five examples were Food Republic branches. I think the title is the biggest problem; it needs a qualifier like modern or indoor.

Me, I like the elaborate, air-conditioned evolution and street carts and worn shophouses. What I find fascinating—and what others might call sad—is that many of these vendors are street stall transplants. For instance, the beef noodles sold at Food Opera, the food court inside the ION Orchard Shopping Mall, aren’t approximations churned out by a no-nothing upstart, they are the fourth iteration of a stall that opened in the 1940s. Then again, the most recent version was relocated to the mall because the owner’s spot was subsumed by a new apartment complex. Progress over preservation, is still the order of the day in much of Asia’s urban centers.

Singapore has always come across as a bit sanitized and un-sentimental, and I don't necessarily mean that pejoratively. I wonder if they have neighborhood booster bloggers like we do in NYC, who mourn the loss of old signage, mom-and-pop businesses and last-century grit?

Photo credit: WiNG via Wikimedia Commons

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Apr 2

China’s Salad Days Are Over

When not competing with Dubai or Taiwan over skyscraper records, the Chinese are (or were, rather) gaming the one-trip-only salad bar at Pizza Hut by devising elaborate vertical stacking. The company phased out the self-serve stations in 2009, likely due to customers’ creative plating.

Can a person really eat that quantity of cucumbers? And do you really want to taste peaches, corn and salad dressing in the same bite?

Photo from frites & fries

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