Wander, Eat, and Tell

Wandering Brooklyn, Part II

Another beautiful day in the neighborhood! Today is going to involve covering a bit more territory, so I have enlisted a partner in crime to join my expedition. We still won’t make a dent in the cultural offerings and exceptional foods of Brooklyn, not to mention the physical area this great city encompasses. This could take all summer! Yay! How lucky am I that this particular adventure requires little more than a MetroCard, HopStop, and some imagination? Good thing too, since my next plane ticket has yet to be purchased… my inner gypsy needs all the stimulation she can find and Brooklyn fits her budget.

A very slow moving morning landed me very close to home for breakfast – classic Belgian pastries and an iced green tea at Colson on the corner of 9^th Street and 6^th Avenue. Actually, I don’t know how classic my goat cheese and roasted pepper turnover was, but the pastry was flaky, delicate, buttery, and baked perfectly (no soggy spots). I’m happy and ready for the real adventure to begin.

A short ride on the G train brings us to Clinton Hill (C train would bring you to the door), a rapidly gentrifying, but still fun and funky neighborhood. Our destination is Habana Outpost (757 Fulton Street at S. Portland), the far more colorful and exciting sister restaurant of Café Habana in NoLita. habana Just walking up to this place makes you happy! You can easily imagine that you are on a Caribbean island with all the brightly colored umbrellas, tables, walls, and huge red food truck parked in the middle of the lot. The 90-degree weather only helped the illusion along! You order your food and drinks inside the restaurant then take your ticket and your well priced margarita out to the truck where the chef will cook your food to order – a decent Cubano sandwich, an amazing ear of grilled corn with queso blanco, a good cactus salad (too many red onions), and screamin’ hot fried sweet plantains. The best part about this place is the ambiance and the laid back, diverse clientele. Hoping to make this a regular stop this summer – I imagine it is a great place to spend an evening. Next time, I’ll hit the “corn and a drink” express line.

Next time I’m in the area, I will definitely try Bati, the Ethiopian restaurant just down the street at 747 Fulton. I’ve heard good things but just couldn’t do two big meals that close together in this heat. But, I did manage a visit to Cake Man Raven’s shop at 708 Fulton Street for a piece of his famous red velvet cake, to go. Yes, it was worth all the hype and the $6/slice price tag. I can say that I never really got the whole red velvet thing, but this is damn good cake!

From Clinton Hill, we headed over to DUMBO and Brooklyn Bridge Park to walk off lunch and work up an appetite for the multi-course dessert ahead. We already had our red velvet cake in hand. A stop at Jacques Torres chocolates provided us with one of the best chocolate chip cookies in NYC and a “wicked” frozen hot chocolate (chiles and chocolate – say no more!). If this wasn’t enough, we topped it all off with a scoop of handmade ice cream (coffee for me, chocolate chunk for my partner in crime) from the Brooklyn Bridge Ice Cream Factory. Overkill? Possibly. But so good, it was worth not eating dinner tonight!

Wandering Brooklyn, Part I

It’s the first truly beautiful warm day of the year here in NYC and since I live in a perfect neighborhood for enjoying beautiful days, I thought I’d do my culinary wandering in my own ‘hood today. Granted, I didn’t cover all that much ground, but I did discover some treats – both local and not!

To get the most of the beautiful day and to attempt to revive my fading tan, I headed to Prospect Park with a good book (the one I was pleasantly distracted from while at the beach in Alcoy). At the park, I stopped for my first dirty-water-dog of the year (everything on it). It totally hit the spot – tasted just like a classic NYC day in the park, which is fortunate and appropriate.

For a late lunch I tried a relatively new place in Park Slope, Hanco’s Bubble Tea & Vietnamese Sandwich (350 7^th Avenue at 10^th Street). Aptly named. I had a spicy bahn mi, an almond bubble tea, and xio (pandan flavored sweet rice, mung bean and coconut cake). The bahn mi was a refreshing balance of crispy, crunchy, and chewy – I’m definitely hooked! The xio was chewy and not too sweet at all – it reminded me (distantly) of some of my favorite Filipino treats (without coming close to the real thing – have to go in person for that). The bubble tea came home with me for a shot of rum, which helped both of us greatly!

OK, now I’ve done classic NYC and Vietnamese street food… time to figure out what’s for dinner. Any suggestions?

On deck for tomorrow: Roebling Pizza, Cuban street food, and margaritas.

Island Time

As I sit here in my freezing cold office avoiding going out into the 50 degree overcast chill of this NYC “spring”, I can’t help daydreaming about being on an island – preferably in the Philippines!

I recently returned from a glorious two-week vacation – 4 days in Hong Kong, 9 days in Cebu & Manila. More on Hong Kong in the near future… today my mind is on a different kind of island!

It will take me several posts to cover all the wonderful food and experiences I had while in the Philippines, so best get started now with a bit of an overview with hints of things to come. To begin with, here are five of my (numerous) favorite foods that remind me of silky breezes, hot sun, warm clear waters, and my loved ones:

Lechon (PIG!!): Pig products hold an especially dear place in my heart. I have yet to taste a part of the pig that did not bring me pure pleasure, and I’m fairly confident that, as I make my way from tip to tail, I will not be disappointed… but then again, I’m a reasonably adventurous eater! Filipinos have a way with pig that melts my heart!

Mangoes: Cebu is famous for its mangoes, and rightfully so!

Halo Halo (translation: Mix Mix): The most decadent, tropical ice cream sundae ever! Ube (purple yam) ice cream is a must, accompanied by jackfruit, custard cubes, young coconut, preserved sweet beans, gelatin cubes, and anything else that sounds yummy, all over shaved ice!

Mangosteens: This trip was my first experience with fresh mangosteen… opening one for the first time was like finding a sweet-tart, segmented jewel of tender fruit in a deep purple shell.

Tanduay Rum: Over 150 years of Filipino distilling history in a bottle. I don’t know if it really is the best rum I’ve ever had, or if the company I kept was just that incredible – the memories of both are forever linked. It’s amazing what you can do with a little help from your friends! Best served with Coke (Zero in our case) and fresh calamansi juice.

Cebu April 2009

A brief history of a GastroNomad

I’ve been a chef (or at least a professional cook) for over 15 years. I’ve been in love with food all of my life. Food has always meant more to me than simply “what’s for dinner.” Even before I understood the concept of food as a symbol of culture, I knew that different families ate different foods and that these foods were important to them – that sharing a meal was akin to sharing personal history, an intimate act.

I remember the first time I realized this. I was 9 years old. My best friend invited me to dinner at her grandmother’s house with her huge Italian family. Until then, I didn’t realize how families from other regions of Italy ate so differently from my own family whose roots are in southern Italy and Sicily. I was served an exotic dish I had never heard of before – polenta, which had been molded into a large loaf then sliced and served topped with meat ragù and grated cheese. I remember being amazed by the silky firmness and sweet corn flavor of the polenta. It reminded me of really thick cream of wheat, so I was shocked that it was served with a savory meat sauce – and for dinner! Everyone was so excited to have Nonna’s polenta – a family favorite. When I got home that night, I told my Sicilian grandmother all about the exotic meal I’d eaten at Michelle’s Nonna’s house. She explained to me that polenta was made from corn meal and that it is eaten by people from the north the same way we enjoy macaroni. That was my first lesson in food as culture.

I was fortunate to grow up in a home where exploring cultures through cuisine was encouraged and relished. When others were satisfied with egg fu yung, we were eating Sichuan dishes; when Rice-a-Roni was considered a treat, we were indulging in squid ink paella. On holidays we enjoyed traditional Italian-American specialties rounded out with traditional Polish foods and classic French pastries or tropical fruits like ripe mangos and papayas for dessert. My sisters and I all had adventurous palates long before we went off on our own, with our mother’s adventurous spirit to thank for it!

Even the simplest foods – or should I say “especially” the simplest foods – speak volumes about where someone is from and the role food played in their development. As an adult, my inner gypsy became obsessed with traveling to the roots of these foodways. It could be as simple as going to Pennsylvania Dutch country for real scrapple or Brooklyn for pizza; or going a bit further to Milan for risotto Milanese, or tasting various types of ensaymadas in the Philippines.

Five years ago, I decided to turn my fascination with food and culture into a career by getting a Masters degree in Gastronomy and focusing my research on immigrant foodways and globalization. The GastroNomad is my way of sharing my travel and eating adventures with you.