Dec 16
If photos are your thing, here is my Dubai Flickr set that’s a million times more full of stuff than what I posted to Instagram. I ate some real food from all corners of the Middle East. I also ate at California Pizza Kitchen and Shake Shack. I tweeted a lot (and lost a few followers–bye, self-serious food bros). Sorry, I can’t stop and I won’t stop with the international IHOPs and Cheesecake Factories. 2014 is going to be the least service-y year yet. Guaranteed.
The United Arab Emirates do not have an innovative chip, and yes I mean that in the American sense, culture on par with , say, Thailand (seaweed, soft-shell crab, and blueberry and hazelnut Pringles) or Russia (caviar and mushroom Lay’s). The flavors are fairly tame with ketchup, a little nod to Canada, being the most oddball.
The country, does, however, have a homegrown brand called Mr. Krisps, most notable for mashing up corn tortillas and pizza flavors with a wild west flair. At first glance, one might think the mysterious broad-shouldered gent on the package is a sheriff because of the star on his vest, but then there’s that sombrero, and cheese grater? Parmesan, presumably in hand.
Mr. Krisps, himself, is a confusing colonial American corn-bodied mascot.
The two combined proved irresistible. I can’t speak to the actual contents of the packet. The chips were pulverized to a coarse grit in my suitcase.
It’s inevitable. No matter how much amazing local (and not so local–I broke down and tried pulpo a la gallego one evening) food I may eat while abroad, when I return to NYC the first thing I want is Mexican or Thai (assuming I didn’t go to Mexico or Thailand, obviously) and preferably delivered to my door. (I did actually go as far as registering for 24h.ae, the Seamless of the UAE, and attempted to place an order for a mixed grill and fatayer but it kept rejecting my credit card.)
Qi is my neighborhood (home and work) standby for better-than-you’d-think Thai. It’s usually crispy pork and basil and a beef tendon if it’s dinner or duck salad if it’s lunchtime. Maybe what they say about travel is true and now my horizons have been broadened because I broke out of my routine and ordered something listed as salmon wild ginger curry with kanom jiin noodle a.k.a. Brooklynized khao soi (it’s not served at the Times Square branch). And it was good.
The lip-tingling coconut milk broth, seven on a scale of one-to-ten, with fish balls resembling mini bocconcini comes separate from the base components–musty strips of krachai, sour, slightly sweet cabbage, bean sprouts, chopped green beans, sliced red onions, thick round rice noodles–to reduce transitory sog. I couldn’t say whether the kanom jiin (more commonly spelled jeen) were fermented over a period of days as tradition dictates. I do know that the egg yolks remained impressively wobbly while the salmon skin had lost most of its crunchiness, as would be expected as side effect of delivery. The main thing that was off was the proportion of liquid to stuff (the primary photo is half of what came in the plastic containers). It got a little soupier after a stir, though.
That’s the Brooklyn Flickr filter, by the way (I’m two-timing Instagram). Could you tell? What neighborhood in Brooklyn do you think that is?
One can only dream.
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Bread. The new thing. Baking in oyster shells, putting chicken,other birds/protein inside, cooking table side. Alinea working on our version
— Grant Achatz (@Gachatz) December 7, 2013
Alder was not exactly what I expected. The food was fairly straightforward, at least in comparison to WD-50, which wasn’t a detriment for the dishes since most are memorable close to a month later. I couldn’t conjure up a single detail about the room if I tried, though. Perhaps that wasn’t the point.
Even though I’ve been trying to work my way through two pounds of Chinese sausage picked up at Costco, I still ordered the pigs in a blanket that wrap flattened hot dog buns around the sweet fatty links of lap cheong. The emphasis here is more on the link than the normally puffy coating. Served with sweet chile sauce and Japanese mustard, these are the perfect cross-cultural snacks. They will not be forgotten come Super Bowl.
The quail scotch eggs, whose shrunken size provides a good coating to innards ratio, also tread in bar snack territory.
Grilled octopus combined the most unusual flavors and it was also the most successful composed dish. Octopus and chorizo, I could buy in that Portuguese-y pork and seafood way. Sweet potato–why not? Banana, though, seemed, well, bananas, one step too far. It was not. Oily sausage, paprika and octopus coins are strong enough for a sweet, starchy accent.
Instagram works. I might not have considered the goat if I hadn’t seen the whole animal being prepped before service. I’m not sure what else went into this take on Jamaican goat curry and coco bread, but based on taste it was less a riff than a rendition, just presented spilling out of a wedge of acorn squash.
Alder * 157 Second Ave., New York, NY
People may complain about the pervasiveness of American culture, but abroad it’s Britishisms all the time. At the airport Costa Coffee (yes, yes, a British chain) the advertisement for mince pies (also, mince for ground as in ground beef will never be right) set me off. Thankfully, the sight of the turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwich tempered my Thanksgiving outrage a bit. Also, did you know that Costa Coffee recently started offering camel milk?
I said “takeaway” and hated myself for it when I over-ordered at the mall food court and didn’t want to leave food behind. We all know what to go means, right?
The only mention of Thanksgiving was this frozen turkey display at Carrefour. This is also a four-day weekend in Dubai, but it’s for National Day, which means a lot of flags.
My hotel room, which is slightly larger than my Brooklyn apartment which isn’t super tiny, has a kitchen. Unfortunately, there is an electric tea kettle but no coffee maker. I’ve scoffed at foodies who travel with pour over coffee contraptions, but now I’m not laughing. I resorted to buying a jar of private label instant espresso that was imported from Poland.
This is only one-third of the instant coffees displayed at the Carrefour inside of the Mall of the Emirates. The mall is a three-minute walk from my room.
I’ve wondered why American malls don’t contain grocery stores when it’s commonplace in other countries. I will concede that shopping carts in a crowded (Thursday night is Saturday night here, if you didn’t know that already) mall isn’t the wisest idea. Someone has one half-way through the entrance of the Cheesecake Factory. There was still a wait for tables at 10pm.
It has now taken me 96 hours to get this short post uploaded because my laptop internet won’t stay connected long enough to insert photos. At least that now gives me the chance to share a picture of a guy driving down the street with his pet monkey hanging out of car…or not–it’s taking over 20 minutes to email the photo and instagram crashes my ipad, which I resorted to because the laptop won’t work. You are really missing out. Ok, the mall has better free wifi.
One of the most eye-catching cans in a typically boring grocery section. Nice use of a single color.
In the December Food & Wine (no features online yet) you’ll find what might be the world’s classiest bread bowl, prettified with saffron, violet and pink petals floated across the still surface. I would like to believe that the crusty loaf is sitting atop a bed of smoked hay, but it’s probably just dry Alpine grass, and it is.
The dish is actually called Hay Soup because that is what it’s baked in, and not only contains 20 herbs, but cream from cows that have eaten the same herbs. You’ll have to go to the Dolomites to experience this sourdough majesty, though; it’s served at Gostner Schwaige, a restaurant with no website.
Since I’m spending Thanksgiving in a desert where the only English-language TV shows appear to be Low Winter Sun and According to Jim, indulge my nostalgia and allow me to link to a teenage photo of myself with a bread bowl (on Christmas, but a holiday still).
Matt Rainey for The New York Times
This creature appeared in The New York Times last week with no commentary beyond “Appetizers include hummus with olive oil, herbs and lemon.” And parsley hair?
Photo via Danielle Spencer
You may (or may have not) noticed that this blog has been revamped. I call this out because it’s still a little messy. I’m aware that images are missing and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some strange formatting and bad links, but let me know if there’s anything egregious.
The content is more or less the same but with the integration of one of my Tumblrs (I’ve attempted using Tumblr like four different times and can’t really stand it for anything that’s not photo-centric–the reblogging, following culture freaks me out because I don’t need my social networks to be that social) so if you find my current obsession with middle-aged drinking not to your liking…well, we can’t have it all.
I’m about to head to Dubai, a land where Benihana serves turkey temaki and gyoza to celebrate the friendship of pilgrims and Indians, just like in a story book. It should be fun. See you in December.
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