Three weeks in Europe spread across London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Madrid. In and out of planes, trains, taxis, trams, hotels, conference centers, restaurants, bars, markets, and friends' homes. I am still spinning like a top...
Out of this deluge of experience, these things have started to emerge as lasting gastronomic impressions:
Pan con tomate is a Catalan tapa (or tapac) specialty. A flat, broad piece of crusty bread, toasted, rubbed with half a raw tomato to give it a slight sweetness and acidity, then drizzled with olive oil (with its own green smell and flavor), and finally sprinkled with fleur de sel. I could not get enough. An incredibly versatile and consistently delicious dish. This one is from Tapaç24 in Barcelona.
Croissants for breakfast everyday. Damn the consequences. I had been resisting in London...giving in occasionally in Brussels...and finally caved in Barcelona. Every day a croissant and cafe con leche. Exactly the slow start my system prefers. Oddly enough, the croissants in Spain were made with lard, not butter. Heavier, a little wetter, not as flaky, and with a little more bite to them. Perhaps because of my recent infatuation with pork fat, I enjoyed this version the most. (This particular croissant was from a cafe in Barrio Gracia, I forget where.)
Chuletitas de cabrito (baby goat chops!). It's embarrassing to admit, but I'm really into the flavor of animal fats these days. And boy, the fat on a deep-fried baby goat chop is divine. It has something in common with the muttony flavor of broiled lamb chop fat, but you would never confuse it with sheep. It's not that gamey or heavy. I told E with utter conviction yesterday, "There is no way I could ever be a vegetarian now that I've tasted baby goat." Our most delicious cabrito was at Restaurant Envalira, also in Barrio Gracia. (Forgot my camera, so this is from another Web site.)
Fresh butter at St. John in London. I blogged about this earlier. As the initial impressions of my meal at St. John fade, what stays firmly lodged in my memory is the sweetness and freshness of their butter. This is such a fundamental, pure, fresh flavor.
Beef tartare sandwiches from Van Dobben in Amsterdam. It was the weirdest thing: the only word I could think of to describe this phenomenal sandwich was "refreshing." The meat was so fresh and clean tasting. One day I hope to learn about the phases meat goes through as it ages (oxidation, etc.), but I do know that less fresh meat has a more iron-y flavor to it. This had some "hay" (chi) left in it. The sandwich itself: super-fresh soft white roll with butter, fresh ground beef, salt, white pepper, and chopped fresh onions.
Steak tartare with shiso leaf at La Quincaillerie in Brussels. Similar to in Hong Kong, it seems to me that the base level of cooking skill in Brussels is higher than in other cities in the world. La Quincaillerie is not an average restaurant by any stretch of the imagination, but nonetheless I felt that this dish embodied the confidence and sophistication one finds in Brussels restaurants in general: first, the wonderful color contrast of the pinky-brick red of the meat with the yellow green of the large slice of lime. Then the delicate texture of the meat with the crispy-gooey toast and the elasticity/boing-iness of the raw greens. And the sweet-iron-acid meat flavor balanced by the herbal surprise of the shiso leaf. This is such a cool dish. 
Belgian waffles at the train station in Antwerp. Even when it comes to low-brow street food, the Bruxellois take things to the next level. The man in the waffle cart took this little brown crust of waffle, put it back on the griddle to warm and toast it, then drowned it in melted milk chocolate that later hardened into a chocolate bar as it cooled in my tray. Finally, he topped it with a generous dollop of real whipped cream. No fake chocolate product. No fake whipped cream. Street food made with the highest quality ingredients!
Frites for breakfast in Amsterdam. Croissants for breakfast are good, but French fries for breakfast are also good. We hit Amsterdam during an unusual streak of sunny days and found ourselves one morning strolling by the canals in the sunlight when I caught a whiff of fried potatoes. The frites guys had barricaded themselves into their stand with a wall of golden potatoes. The frites themselves were extra crispy and had a nice, strong potato flavor. Potato sunshine in a paper cone. It seemed like the best possible thing to eat at that moment. E wondered how I knew this particular frites stand would be good. I think it was the golden color and the fact they had so many fries in there. (Would you make that many if you weren't going to sell them?)
Padrones peppers. Also fried, also good. I get a lot of pleasure from color, and these were so exquisitely emerald green, I kept ordering them just to see them. This particular batch are from Cala del Vermut in Barcelona.
The elegant atmosphere at Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid. My friend J, who relocated from NYC to Donostia-San Sebastian, said "The Spanish do not suffer willingly." From the lovely 300 km/hr AVE train that whisked us from Barcelona to Madrid, to the smooth highways, to the totally unmodern practice of taking lunch for two hours (with wine) during the week, there is a sense in Spain that enjoyment and quality are necessities. Aside from all of the wonderful food in this market, the beautifully restored building, glossy plate glass windows, atmospheric lighting, high-end tableware...created an ideal environment for a sustained period of munching and shmoozing.
Dinner at home at J's sister-in-law's house in Madrid. How long has it been since someone entertained us in their home? I can't tell you how much I've missed this, and how touched we were that my friend J's sister-in-law would create such a beautiful table for us to share. Wonderful wines, homemade chorizo from her boyfriend's family, peppers with anchovies, Manchego cheese, the freshest bread, whiskey, chocolate, Nespresso ;-) The last time we were invited to a dinner in someone's home in HK, we were charged for the privilege -- no joke!
Gezelligheid at Eetcafe Van Beeren in Amsterdam. Real candlelight, a smiling waitress, a small globe of tasty beer, generous portions of gourmet Dutch pub food (e.g., escargots, steak tartare, smoked trout salad), solid wooden tables, laughter from nearby tables...there's actually a word for this in Dutch. According to my Lonely Planet Amsterdam Encounter guide, the word gezelligheid roughly translates as "snug, friendly, cosy, informal, companionable and convivial."
Charles V beer. How do the Bruxellois stay so trim and attractive? I mean really? The only thing I can figure is that they are so accustomed to delicious food and drink that they're not desperate to gobble it up before it can escape (or they have to return home). Maybe better food is the real solution to our public health problems in the US. Anyhoo...this beer, served at an ordinary neighborhood pub, was unlike any I have tasted. The closest flavor comparison I can think of is a good Gruyere cheese: sweet and nutty, salty and tangy, and buttery all at once. I could have sat down and drank beer the entire time we were in Belgium.
A plate of chickpeas at Bar Pinotxo in the Boqueria in Barcelona. Chickpeas are a pretty lowly food to have as a house specialty, but wow, I've never had anything like this. The garbanzo beans in this dish were the extra-big, extra-deluxe version. They were much softer and butterier than the way I've tried them prepared anywhere else. The sauce must have been some combination of tomatoes and shallots and peppers. There was a bit of sweetness and savoryness and acidity to balance the mellowness of the chickpeas, but it wasn't harsh. If this dish were a piece of music, the notes would all be modulating in nearby tones.
And with that, I'll stop rhapsodizing. After this whirlwind tour of so many European cities in so little time, a strong impression of the fundamental differences in Western and Eastern cuisines is bubbling up, but it hasn't yet crystalized so I'll save it for later.
It's Easter morning and I am sitting in McDonalds in London in my pajamas.
It's what we glorious global travelers do when our handsome sweethearts catch a miserable cold on the 15-hour flight from Hong Kong to London and spend the night rocking our tiny hotel room with deep, chesty coughs. We eat all of the chocolate in the hotel lobby and then take ourselves over to McDonalds on Edgware Road to write about mind-bending meat.
Despite the fact that the McDonalds coffee machine is broken, I feel extraordinarily lucky. Twice in the past week on two different continents I've found myself saying,
"THIS is why we came to..."
Last Saturday it was "THIS is why we came to Hong Kong!"
We were sitting in a curtained booth at Sun Tung Lok, one of the two Michelin 3* Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong (the other is Lung King Heen at the Four Seasons) -- surrounded by steamer baskets and plates.
If you don't live in Hong Kong, you may not know that most upscale Chinese restaurants have two chefs: a regular chef and a dim sum chef. Being a dim sum chef is kind of like being a pastry chef -- it's a very specialized, punishing kind of training that used to include eating all of one's "outtakes." Most young chefs won't subject themselves to this kind of misery for such low pay, so the best dim sum comes from older hands. I don't actually know if it was the dim sum chef at STL who won their 3*, but when I caught a glimpse of the 70-ish gentleman handling steamer baskets behind the counter I felt very optimistic about our meal.
Holy cow (or should I say holy pig?)! The highlight of our meal was a pork bun with preserved vegetable. I wanted to cry this thing was so good: a gorgeous little square of fatty pork that flaked gently apart between my teeth, the rich flavor perfectly balanced with a complex preserved vegetable accent (not too much) in a luxurious, pillowy steamed bun. You just don't get pork that tastes like this in the USA. The porkiness is much more concentrated here. My friends over at Chowhound say that some restaurants here, like Din Tai Fung use black pork that's similar to Japanese Kurobuta pork (also called Berkshire pork?). Maybe that's why this thing tasted so good, but clearly the chef at STL also knew how to coax the best flavors out of this meat. Glorious, glorious pork bliss!
And then the pork bliss took another form: baked green onion and pork buns with sesame. Think about the cakiness and shortness of a fresh, well-made scone. These things had that wonderful texture, created undoubtedly with lard, not butter. In the midst of which was an intense burst of oniony flavor that reminded me of the yummy buns I ate while in Beijing last spring. Richness surrounding an intense, earthy core. Hooray!
(Apologies for this photo...)
After the pork? Beef, of course! Did they start this wonderful beef with enoki mushroom rice roll with dried beef? The flavor was so intense and complex and roasty I asked E to be quiet for a minute so that I could give it my full attention ;-)
After that came this texture miracle: scallop and shrimp dumplings with crab roe. The roe sat on top of the scallop which itself sat on top of a shrimp that was plumper and crisper than any shrimp I've ever sunk my teeth into before. I don't mean crispy like it was fried...no, the texture of the meat was just delightfully crunchy. My friend C says they do this by refrigerating the shrimp meat before steaming. I am not convinced that that could really yield such an amazing result. However they do it, the result is glorious...
And finally, rounding things off, my first bite of shark's fin. I know it's wrong. I know it's bad, but I had to try it at least once...didn't I? And where better to try it than a 3* restaurant that specializes in dried seafood. You'll see below that I ordered a very large shark's fin dumpling that came with a little saucer of vinegar. What was it like? The shark's fin itself comes in chewy-ish strands. They almost reminded me of the cells that make up the flesh of a grapefruit. The flavor itself is very light, with a complex subtle fishiness. 
Before this meal I hadn't ever been so conscious of the dynamics of flavor. Like music...if you think of a flavor like shark's fin as the note (e.g., middle-G) and the intensity (light or subtle) as the dynamics (e.g., pianissimo), how do you compose the overall experience for the taste buds? Do you start with a pianissimo flavor and then startle the taste buds with something that tastes forte? Do you build things up from a very quiet start to a powerful ending? Hmmm...
A week later I find myself on a different continent, in a totally different type of environment, transfixed by a totally different preparation of meat.
"THIS is why we came to London!"
There's a good chance you've heard of St. John Restaurant in London. It was started by the chef Fergus Henderson, who wrote the catchilly-titled cookbook The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating. St. John's specialty is, of course, meat. The restaurant environment is basically white, but not fussy white. There's butcher paper on the tables and gray-painted-wood floors. Nothing to distract from the baroque smells of roasted meat wafting all over the restaurant. I have a particularly sensitive nose, so my senses were lit up as if I were a golden retriever. If I had a tail, it would have been wagging as we walked into this place. And then a waitress walked by with an entire roasted pig on her shoulder. Oh my goodness. I want some of that! But I couldn't have it -- it was special ordered for a party in the next room ;-(
What I did have was...
The sweetest, freshest butter I have ever tasted in my life. What was that Chinese gastronomy term that I just learned to describe the sweet, fresh natural taste of something? I've got to look it up, but this butter was really wonderful. It felt criminal not to eat all of it...
And then, wonderful roasty-meaty-rich rabbit offal accompanied by mellow white beans cooked with sage and onions (shallots?). Man, this is so *my kind of food*. Why do people have to put so many ingredients in their cooking? I'm not an advocate of hands-off cooking where you put a bunch of raw ingredients on the plate. I do believe in the art of cooking to enhance and celebrate the food. But that said, there's no need to overwhelm the diner with too many flavors and obscure the artistry of the chef. Rabbit, beans, onions, sage -- yeah, baby!
And then there was this strange inky-plate of cuttlefish topped with a pile of shaved, intensely vinegary onions. The only way you can get away with this strange fishiness is by knocking the palate back into shape with intense acid. Kind of a bracing dish for me. 
And then...pickled meat accompanied by a little pile of celeriac in more of that brilliant fresh cream. Salty-sour complexity and tender texture washed away by cool, diffused sweet flavor and a slight crispiness. Brilliant. 
And then my main arrived...roast beef with chard. Oh God, this was so beautiful. Presentation-wise, it doesn't get any better than this for me. Save your stupid towers and Jenga-like constructions. Real food is beautiful just the way it is. A perfect slice of roast beef? It's gorgeous. And the amount of food was also perfect. Enough to satisfy my appetite. Not a gigantic mount or an artistic piddle. This is exactly how much of this meat I wanted to eat -- and the serving of intensely- mustardy chard was the perfect amount needed to balance the wonderful irony-roasty flavor of the meat. In my mind, this was perfect food.
And how weird is life, writing about these food experiences while downing a bitter cup of black tea and a rubbery blueberry McDonalds muffin in the company of a clutch of teenage boys waiting out the night, an old man with smear of blood on his forehead, and a homeless guy who asks for the sticker on my drink cup (6 = a cup of free coffee).
