MUNICH DAY 1: PRETZELS AND A BACON OMLETTE

I must admit that prior to arriving in Germany, I was a bit apprehensive about the cuisine. I didn't know much about German food, aside from the beer, pretzels, schnitzel and lots of sausages. So I pretty much thought that I'd be screwed(not consuming pork and beef), and living off of beer, pretzels and gummi bears for my entire week in Germany.

And in retrospect, I realize that I was completely right. I really did live mostly off of beer (and might I add, the best beer that I've ever had), pretzels and salads for most of the trip. I quickly realized one of my problems was my lack of knowledge of the German language. I mean, I speak a good number of languages, but German was completely beyond me. There are words that are like 16 letters long. Sometimes without vowels! And when you're staring at a menu like that, you really have no safe place to go.

So let's get started on my first day in Germany. I've decided to organize these posts by day rather than by meal since it'll make things a ton easier. I arrived at the Munich airport (at this point, my favorite airport in the world, it's just immaculate and really cool) where I met my best friend Rudes. We quickly ran off to the metro, dropped our stuff at the hostel and went looking for food. (With all the flight delays and layovers, it'd taken me 22 hours to get from Boston to Munich). Unfortunately, it was Saturday, and we quickly learned that not much is open after 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. We tried to find some of the restaurants listed in my guidebook, but ended up at a marketplace where we found lots of Australian and Brazilian soccer fans enjoying beer, sausages and pretzels. Wait, first let me show you this massive stack of pretzels at a pretzel stand.Ok, so i sent Rudy in to buy some food and he found out that the place had absoloutely no food that did not have pork in it. Except for a pretzel. I was off to a great start. So of course, I got a pretzel, while Rudy had his first (and certainly not last) sausage of the trip. My pretzel was a little disappointing, but really, what did I expect, it wasn't exactly the specialty of the beer stand. And I was just happy to have something to eat.But Rudy's beer was great. Though he didn't know how to pour it. (hence all the head. I had to teach him how to pour it correctly.)And he really liked his sausage.
I'm gonna throw in some pics of the marketplace that we were in. here's a pic of a meat stand.And of course, the ubiquitous white asaparagus. These things are hard to find in the U.S. and they're really expensive, but they're everywhere in Germany. And they have huge ones too. This is just a pic of the asaparagus tips.Ok, back to the food. Rudes and i went back to the hostel for a power nap. And by the time we'd gotten up, it was dinner time. (like 9:30, we just slid right into the European schedule, which wasn't hard cause it was still light out). We decided to hit a biergarten, cause that's what Munich is famous for (this is where they hold Oktoberfest afterall). And we found a big one, the Augustiner, which is actually a big chain, with the Italy v. USA soccer game on.

So I was faced with a German menu. Actually, it was translated into English. But something was lost in translation. I decided to order a mushroom omlette served on bread. I thought that was pretty safe. And I discovered the Radler (which I'd read about in my guidebook). It's basically beer mixed with lemon soda. I had to give it a try. And it was excellent. I ended up drinking these throughout our trip. (when Sam, the German expert, arrived a few days later, he explained the whole story behind radlers, which I'll tell you if you're actually curious, but it's actually a lighter beer drink for earlier in the day.) Here we are with our beers.So when my omlette arrived. It looked pretty good. Lots of mushrooms. And we were sitting outdoors, so it was pretty dark. About two bites into it, I realized that it was filled with bacon. Actually, with the flash from the camera, you can see the bacon. I hadn't eaten bacon since i was 15. But i didn't freak out. I just picked out the bigger chunks and finished the omlette. Whatever, we were in Germany after all. And let me say, after 11 years, bacon doesn't taste too bad. But i'm not gonna start eating it now.We were entertained by a really crazy Australian band that seemed to be traveling from biergarten to biergarten. (we'd actually seen them earlier in the day). But they were really so drunk that they sounded terrible, but were still a lot of fun. And we finished dinner with this apple dessert thingy. Which wasn't very good, but again, I don't think that was their specialty.All in all it wasn't a great food day for me. But i had an excellent time trying out the beer and enjoying the atmosphere. I just hoped for the arrival of Sam, the only person in our group who would be able to understand those German menus.

A FAREWELL DINNER

Yes, it's true, I'm back in Boston. And I have lots of posting to do about all the emails i ate in Europe, including having bacon for the first time in over ten years while in Munich. (details to follow). But of course, I still haven't posted about the farewell dinner we had for myself plus Huong at Emma's in Kendall Square the night before I left.

Ok, so you'll have to forgive me on this, but I've basically forgotten everything that we ordered. I'm mean really, do you recall meals you've had 2 weeks ago? But you can take a look at the Emma's menu. I'd heard great things about Emma's, especially from my older sister who's a big fan of the place, and Leah, who characterized the pizza as "like candy." I was a little disappointed about the parking situation when we drove into Kendall Square. I've gone shopping at the Garment District, just 2 blocks away, many times, and I've always been able to find parking. Not this night, though. We ended up parking in the lot by Kendall Square Cinema.

There were quite a few of us for dinner. 9 to be exact. and I'd been told that Emma's is a small place, but I didn't figure out how small until the 9 of us had to squeeze around 2 tables. It was ok though. We made it work and it's a good thing that we all knew each other well. The problem would be fitting all the pizza on the two tables. We started off by ordering some guacamole and pita bread. Which was a great idea since i just love guacamole.And then we ordered a lot of pizzas. Basically we tried to order one pizza for every 2 ppl and we wanted to be able to swap slices . So below is the pizza that Tom and I shared. I have no recollection of what was on it.And here's a pic of the pizza Edwin and Aaron shared. As you can see, they are able to split one pizza into 2 styles. So that's pretty cool. I did have a slice of Aaron's and enjoyed that, but again, i have no idea what was on it.And lastly, here's a pic of Katie's pizza. I can pretty much assume that it had goat cheese on it, since Katie is such a goat cheese fan (She's the only college student i know of to keep a supply of goat cheese and baguettes in her dorm room fridge) and i think it's also got sweet potatoes. Which i thought was a cool idea.Overall, we had a really lovely dinner. I liked the pizza, but i think that i've become so accustomed to pizza with some oil on it that I found the Emma's pizza a bit dry. It was fun swapping slices with everyone, though.

After dinner, we decided to go to Toscanini's for some ice cream. And of course, I had to have a mini-sundae. They're tiny, and they're $3, but they're so yummy. I got mine with cappuccino ice cream (i think). I know it wasn't the burnt caramel that I normally get cause they were out of that. I was a little disappointed to see them putting Rediwhip on my sundae since they typically used fresh whipped cream, which is just so delicious. But oh well. At least I got some chocolate sauce too.Oh, and here's a photo of some mini ice cream cakes that we found adorable.Here are Kjell and Huong enjoying their enomorous cup of ice cream that they shared.

And Katie and Dustin. I think Dustin actually got some sort of frappe, which he enjoyed.So overall, a great dinner. And it was wonderful to see my friends before taking off for Germany.

DINNER+SHOPPING=IKEA

Ok people. So this is my last post before I leave for Germany. But I'll be back with lots of new posts about dining abroad and my search for schnitzel, pretzels, beer, gummy bears and of course, chocolate. Meanwhile, here's a post about Swedish food (sort of).

So since I am taking off tomorrow, Leah and i decided to make a quick trip to Ikea. And we planned on having dinner there at the Ikea cafe (look, i created a link! it's useful having a computer geek as a bf afterall), because the food is pretty decent and above all, really really cheap. So the ikea cafe is set up like all cafeteria, it's just much more stylish. You start off picking up your tray and utensils and then proceed onto the cold cases. For some reason, the dessert case was displayed before all others. Unfortunately, they didn't have the apple cake that leah really likes. And they weren't restocking because we got there at 8 and the restaurant closed at 9. So we moved onto the salad case, and I gotta admit, these salad did look pretty decent.As did the sandwich case:But we were really hungry and wanted real food.

So it was onto the hot section. Now ikea doesn't have a ton of choices to choose from. They have like 4 main dishes (but of course, this keeps the costs down).Leah got the Manager's special, which you can see below. It's Swedish meatballs with a side of mac and cheese (is that Swedish?) She liked the meatballs, but felt that the mac and cheese was a little weird, which I agreed with. the texture was just a bit off somehow.Meanwhile, I ordered the herbed salmon. Which came with a side of potatoes and veggies. Now I filled my lifetime quota of salmon a few years ago. It was a combo of working in a kitchen where we were served salmon as part of our nightly means on a daily basis and a trip to Alaska, so I normally don't consume it. But sometimes I'll break that rule. My only other choice for dinner was the chicken marsala, and by that point in the night, it wasn't looking so hot. The salmon was pretty good. I did enjoy the herbs, but again, it was the end of the night, so both the salmon and veggies were pretty dry. I liked the potatoes a lot, though.So after dinner it was onto shopping! And on our way out, Leah picked up an Ikea cinnamon bun, while almost witnessing a fight between an ikea customer and employees over a box of cinnamon buns. I must admit that it's absoloutely genius of Ikea to be serving these. Cause you start smelling it even before you hit the checkout. And they are totally tasty. I didn't get one for myself, it was a little too late at night to be consuming that much sugar, but had a bite of Leah's.

I enjoyed dinner. Or the potential of what dinner could have been had ikea been busier and they were actually turning the food. So I hope to give it another try in the future, this time with a cinnamon bun.

OLD FAVORITES IN SOMERVILLE

We were starving the other night. After a little party at ES, we needed to escape early to feed our tummies. And i needed to pick up inventory in Somerville. So what better place for a quick dinner than the Porter Exchange? I looked foward to some chicken tatsu-age at my favorite place, Cafe Mami, but found that they were closed when we arrived. (kinda strange since it was a Tuesday and all the other cafes were open). So we chose to go to Ittyo, which I hadn't been to before. (I went to the ramen place recently, I even took pics, but I never posted about it. But suffice it to say, it seems to have slipped in quality and is just not that great. It's best avoided).

But back to Ittyo. So we ordered pretty quickly. Leah and I both got chicken cutlets with curry (so I could fill my fried chicken craving) while Tom ordered a chicken teriyaki don. Leah and my dinner came with a little side salad while Tom's came with the obligatory bowl of miso soup, which in the world of miso soups, was pretty average. But I'm not gonna be super picky here. Or did we get the soup and he got the salad? I don't remember now.

At any rate, here's the chicken cutlet curry. You can see that's it's a very generous portion and I totally enjoyed the crunchiness of the chicken mixed with the curry and rice. Plus their curry was a little spicer than the average Japanese curry, and I really liked that, too.Here's Tom's chicken teriyaki don. Which looks really nice. But i don't think he loved it. There was too much sauce which made the entire dish too sweet.We didn't get any dessert, but we did drop by Kotobukiya, the Japanese market, to pick up random snacks. Leah got bottles of marble soda (this cool glass bottle that has a marble in it. I loved them as kid.) While i bought some random snacks like chocolate mushrooms and koalas.

After picking up inventory, Leah suggested ice cream at Christina's in Inman Square. For the uninitiated, Christina's is a pretty famous local ice cream joint that always has a huge menu of homemade ice cream. Here's a look at it below. So we zipped over there and picked up a few scoops. It was a hot night, and I felt that ice cream would be a bit too heavy, so i got this scoop of guava sorbet. I found it very smooth and intensely flavored. I liked it a lot. The other good thing about Christina's is that these big scoops you see below were less than $3/piece.

Here are leah's and tom's. Leah got a burnt sugar. She said it was different from toscanini's burnt caramel and she liked it. And tom got the green tea ice cream. I considered getting this myself, but after trying Tom's, I remembered I don't really like the green tea ice cream at Christina's. It's a bit to heavy on the tea flavoring, i like it more subtle. We sat on benches outside to enjoy our ice cream, so all in all, a great casual summer night in Somerville.

KOREAN BBQ AT YASU

Wow. I'm totally in a blogging kind of mood today. Probably because I'm bored at work.
With back to back Sox games taking place in Fenway, everyone's either in the square to see the games or avoiding the square because of the games. Sigh. Good thing we went to Yasu for dinner last night so I can share that experience with all of you.

So I'd driven by Yasu several times and I had noticed it, but since it was a Korean/Japanese restaurant in Coolidge Corner, I just assumed that it wasn't really a place I wanted to try. However, Katie tried it last week and said it was pretty good, and there was a decent review in the Globe about it and more than anything else, we were a little desperate to find great Korean BBQ in Boston. So after a cold rainy day spent outdoors watching the Pride parade, it was nice to get inside to a warm and cozy bbq joint. When we walked in I was pleasantly surprised to find a fairly large restaurant with the traditional bbq grills and more than that, there were a fair number of Asians in the place (always a good sign). We were seated in a back room with our own table grill. Here's a pic of one of the other tables. You'll notice the vent above too.So there were a bunch of us at dinner (and it's always nice to share stuff at Korean bbq). We started off with 2 orders of scallion seafood pancakes and I must say they did a good job with these. I enjoyed it a lot, and hoped that the following entrees would be just as yummy.So for those of you who have never been to Korean BBQ, you get to order some type of meat and grill it yourself. We got 2 orders of beef and 2 of chicken. And it comes with a whole bunch of sides, which I think is one of my favorite parts. I didn't photograph all of them. I think Tom's friend already thought I was a freak for photographing the food at all, while the rest of you have become accustomed to my eccentricities. But here are the shots i did get. My favorites are always the spinach or beansprouts seasoned with sesame oil. and spicy cucumbers. Though the ones at Yasu are a bit too spicy for me. (always be careful with any red colored foods at a Korean restaurant.)Then the meat arrived. First we grilled the beef bulgogi. You'll notice in the pic above the meat being place on the grill. Leah didn't think the beef was sliced very well. And I'd agree with her if i actually ate beef. At any rate, it appeared to be way too thin and ended up looking a lot like the meat that should go into a cheesesteak (if you've ever had one of those.) So you take the meat, wrap it up in lettuce with some rice and bean paste and whatever little additions you'd like to add. Which is exactly what I did with the chicken below.
So the verdict. Mutual agreement among the two Koreans at dinner plus the girl who grew up eating Korean bbq in LA...Yasu was allright. Leah actually like it less than Koreana, the Korean BBQ place in Cambridge, which i don't really like at all. For me, in the two times that I've had Korean BBQ in Boston, the marinade on the chicken just hasn't been right. Koreana's was kinda muted and strange. While at Yasu I didn't like that the meat was marinate in a spicy sauce. I kinda like adding the spice by myself. Plus, I like doing the grilling on my own, and at Yasu, there as sort of this assumption by the waitstaff that we didn't know what we were doing, so they kept grilling stuff for us.

Ah well. It was a decent meal and worth a shot. I think i'll be holding out for Korean BBQ in NY or LA for future outings.

SWEET SNACKS FROM MEDFORD

Have you heard of the CBS4 AList? I don't know how you haven't, since nearly every business in the city has been nominated. But it's this thing where anyone can nominate a Boston based business and people vote for their favorites. It's basically a big popularity contest, kinda like in high school when you're voting for the prom court. I never voted, but Leah was nice enough to nominate my store in the "Desserts" section since there wasn't a "chocolate" category. So we were surfing around looking at the other nominees last week when we noticed a place called Donuts with a Difference. I'm gonna digress right now and tell you all to visit the CBS4 website to vote for Leah if you haven't done it already. http://cbs4boston.cityvoter.com/Details.aspx?p=2051&Cat=19&SCat=17

But back to the donuts. We decided we wanted to check out this donut place and buy a dozen donuts before heading over to the Pride parade, so on a very rainy Saturday morning, Tom and i headed up to Medford to get the donuts. After getting a little lost, we found this tiny shop on the main part of downtown Medford. It was a store that looked like it'd been there since the 70's. Not much charm, and kinda dark, but they did have a lot of donuts. We picked up 6 different varieties, and it ended up being super cheap. Just $6 for a dozen.

And while we were in Medford, I remembered that there was a Modern Pastry. Since I never go to the North End anymore (there just isn't anywhere to park and I hate the T) I go to Modern like once a year now. But i do love their almond cookies (the plain ones, not the ones with pine nuts) and I picked up a half dozen of those. Here they are below. So light, and chewy, but with a crunchy exterior. I love them.And returning to the donuts. There we were at Pride. The rain was coming down and we ducked under an awning at the Four Seasons for a donut break. And here they are:The look pretty nice. Here's a pic of Leah's boston cream donut. These donuts turned out being super super dense donuts. Leah liked the cream filling, but was sad there was so little of it.And here's tom's jelly donut. Again, not a whole lot of jelly in the middle, but a very dense donut exterior.
I just nibbled on a chocolate donut with sprinkles, but thought it was too much after all the almond cookies I'd had. I think these donuts were worth a try, but probably not a drive all the way to Medford. They were just a bit too heavy and dense, though they were very fresh. Those almond cookies are a different story, though. Almost worth taking the T to the North End. Almost.

SMALL BITES AT TABERNA DE HARO

Lately, I've been going to a lot of the restaurants around my apartment. And after a few trips to O'Leary's, Crispy Crepes and Sushi Express, Tom and I decided to have dinner at Taberna de Haro, the neighborhood tapas restaurant. I'd been to Taberna like 3 years ago, with Katie, Dustin and my best friend, but despite living literally 2 blocks from this place, I hadn't been back since. I don't remember it being bad, but I guess it's a case of taking for granted places that are close to you. Kinda like how I live 5 minutes from the beach in LA, and I never go to the beach there, but will drive an hour to go to a beach in MA.

Anyway, back to dinner. Taberna is often packed, but we were lucky and snagged the last table at the very back of the restaurant. The menu is organized into two sections- pinchos and tapas. Pinchos are basically pieces of garlic rubbed toast topped with different things. Lots of stuff with meat. Acutally it's kinda funny they chose to call them pinchos considering it's a swear word in Spanish, but i digress. Tom ordered 2 different pinchos. One with serrano ham and the other with bluefish? i think that was it. (I didn't photgraph these since I didn't eat them myself, but I think Tom liked the serrano ham.) Meanwhile, I ordered 3 tapas for us to share.

We started off with a small plate of potato salad. (that was a freebie). I liked it cause it was nice and garlickly. I apologize for the white on white pic. Just try to focus on the green chives.My first tapas was a plate of the patatas brava. I always order these. Basically fried potatoes. In this case, they were topped with a spicy tomoato sauce. I wasn't too down with that. I wish the tomato sauce had been used more sparingly or served on the side, cause they made the potatoes kinda soggy. I much prefer them at Toro, where it's served with a garlic aioli.Next, i got the sauteed mushrooms. These were pretty good. I think my favorite part was really soaking up the excess olive oil with pieces of bread. Totally yummy.And the last thing i ordered was a place of garlic chicken. I was a kinda disappointed by the chicken cause it ended up pretty dry. You can even kind tell from the pic. But again, I enjoyed dipping my bread into the excess garlickly olive oil.The thing with tapas at Taberna de Haro is that their tapas are much bigger than tapas at normal Spanish restaurants. I don't think they even call them tapas. They use a different term. So i ordered too much food. The problem is that that means you can't try as much stuff. And the other problem is that the larger portions means that the tapas are much more expensive per plate. Nearly twice the price of the tapas at other places. So dinner was pretty good. Not stellar or great. Personally, my favorite tapas place is still Toro, though it's near impossible to get a table after 6:30. I just prefer the smaller portions, better quality and creativity that goes into their creations. Of course in about a week I'll be writing about tapas in Barcelona, so I may revise my opinion then. For now, if you want tapas in the city, just try Toro. You'll be much happier there.

BROOKLINE FARMER'S MARKET OPENS JUNE 15th

I'm jealous of my little sister. Fine. To be honest I'm jealous of everyone living in California. Why? Cause they get to benefit from having beautiful seasonal produce year round. But it hurts the most in the summer. When I'm home in LA, especially during the summer, I always visit the Wednesday's farmer's market in Santa Monica. It's well known for being one of the best farmer's markets in the country. And it's massive. it covers like 6 blocks. Just endless beautiful produce. With sampling enouraged. Here, check it out. (If i were Tom, I'd be smart enough to create a little link here that you could just click on. But i'm not a computer geek. I sell chocolate. so just cut and paste the damn link into your browser. http://santa-monica.org/farmers_market/)

May is cherry season. They're in full blown cherry season. And my little sister was nice enough to tell me a couple of weeks ago that she bought cherries at the farmer's market and thought of me. Today she told me about the white peaches she bought. I've seen cherries once so far this season. It was a whole foods. It cost over $8/pound. And they didn't even look that great. I missed most of my summer last year cause the store hadn't been open too long and by the end of summer, I was so desperate for the taste of cherries and summer that i spent $25 for a bag of cherries at whole foods. And it was worth it. As for white peaches in Boston, i bought them once, at Savenor's on Charles St. I got one for me and one for my sister. they cost over $2/ea. They weren't even that big. And the sucked. They really really sucked.

So yeah. I love following the change of fruit throught the summer season. Cherries in May, Strawberries in June. Yellow and white peaches in July and August. Sigh. I tried going to the farmer's market in Brookline yesterday with Tom. It was raining, but I had hope of buying some plants to start a summer herb garden on my patio. But it wasn't where it was supposed to be. We thought it might've been cancelled due to the rain. After all, the farmer's market in Central Square had started 2 weeks ago, but I check online today and turns out it doesn't start until next week. Sigh. Guess I'll have to wait until I get another Thursday afternoon off. (in like 2 months). Ah well. Such is life in Boston. But at least we get to go apple picking in the fall and drink apple cider all through winter!

ANOTHER KALE POST

Ok ok. i realize i haven't posted in a long long time. To be honest, I have been eating out, but not anywhere new. So unless you want another post about Victoria's, you'll just have to wait until I eat out somewhere new. (Hopefully you'll get some musings about donuts and Korean food this weekend).

Meanwhile, I've also failed to take pics for this post. Was too busy cooking. But i just wanted to share with all of you this great recipe from epicurious.com. As you all know, I normally turn first to foodtv.com when looking for recipes. In my boston organics order this week, I got yet another order of kale, though while tasty, i really have no idea what to use it for. And all the foodtv.com recipes were of some variation of portuguese sausage soup. Luckily, there was epicurious to the rescue. They had 66 different kale recipes, and I saved like 5 potential ones. I really considered the kale with polenta, but I'd just made polenta last week. So i went with this recipe, for mashed potatoes with kale. (since I had also gotten potatoes in my boston organics order).

ingredients:

1 cup milk
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
1 small carrot, peeled, diced
1 large bay leaf

1 large onion, chopped
1 large bunch kale, rinsed, coarsely chopped (about 8 cups)

4 pounds russet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces

Combine milk, 2 tablespoons butter, carrot and bay leaf in medium saucepan; bring to simmer. Remove from heat; let steep while preparing kale and potatoes.

Melt 1 tablespoon butter in large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion; sauté until light brown, about 8 minutes. Add kale; cover and cook until tender, stirring often, about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook potatoes in large pot of boiling salted water until tender, about 25 minutes. Drain well. Return to same pot; mash with hand masher.

Add kale mixture to potatoes. Strain in enough milk to produce moist, fluffy potatoes. Season with salt and pepper.

Melt 5 tablespoons butter in small saucepan. Mound potatoes in large bowl. Using spoon, make well in top of potatoes. Pour butter into well. Serve hot.

So the other thing i like about epicurious.com is that people can post comments after they've tried out the recipe. So i took a tip from one of them and incorporated the butter into the mashed potatoes rather than pooling it on top. I also made my only little variation by omitting the bay leaf and carrot and steeping some fresh rosemary instead, and that turned out great.

My only regret was adding in too much milk. It caused the potatoes to be a bit too mushy. So add the milk slowly so you don't get some better results. Allright. Pictures this weekend. Promise.