On the Road (4): Eatin'

Maybe best not to eat like this all the time, but you can really eat well on the road. Thanks to smartphones and Yelp, we never had to settle for fast food or drive-thrus when we were out. We had one lunch at a barbecue spot on our first snowy afternoon in Manheim, Pennsylvania. We had a late dinner at Hilbilly Willy's, in a half-empty strip mall near Chattanooga. There was Little Dooey in Starkville, which sadly still had a campaign banner for Mitt Romney up in the dining room, right next to a giant t.v. showing LSU's spring football practices. 

In New Orleans we ate gumbo twice a day, tore into fried oyster po’ boys at Mahony's, and spent a long rainy afternoon on Magazine Street pulling apart a giant sack of crawfish at Tracey's. There were red beans and rice, and jambalaya, and just one lonesome, forgettable Hurricane, grabbed on the go after a night at Preservation Hall.

Ribs with fried okra at Hillbilly Willy's, Chattanooga, TN

Some world-famous beignets at Cafe du Monde.

Fresh crawfish at Big Fisherman Seafood on Magazine Street in New Orleans.

Our national beverage. By the vat, at the Little Dooey, Starkville, Mississippi.

By any other name... still a bad idea

Croatia has a vibrant and diverse wine culture. Among my favorites from Istria is teran, a kind of red-to-black, dry wine that from the right vineyard is sublime.

But Croatians have this insane quirk, which I think is specific to them, of serving wine mixed with Coke, over ice. This summer, I learned that this madness has a name, "Bambus" (they also serve wine with Fanta, which is a "Miš-Maš"). 

I'm just, shaking my head.

The fanciest McDonalds I know

Nyugati pályaudvar, July 22

The idea of there being McDonalds franchises overseas would seem at first glance to suggest the export of the same bland, homogenized, terribly unhealthy strip-mall eating culture that is making America so obese and bland. But there's a weird quirk that I don't think anyone foresaw: just about any McDonalds you go to abroad would be the best McDonalds in America. The restaurant will be clean, the staff will be cheerful, the french fries will be perfect. None of the usual nonsense of alienated labor and low standards you see in the U.S.: tables with used napkins on them, surly counter staff who want to make it clear that they despise you, and limp, cold fries that hit home the fact that this food-like item which is going to eventually kill you might as well make you miserable along the way. 

The one pictured above is at Nyugati railway station in Budapest on the Nagykörút. It was built inside what had been the station restaurant.

Simply hard to beat

On Saturday we made a trip to Kádár Étkezde on Klauzal Ter, a simple lunchroom where the beef broth with matzo was beyond words. 

Kuzminki

(View of the north bank of Shibaevsky Pond)

For this long-weekend (in Russia) Friday we made a rare excursion to eastern Moscow for a trip to Kuzminki Park, which is clear across town but right on the Purple Line. The weather was nice, and Mila was in a good mood, so it was a nice family outing.

No matter what you do with a toddler, you are doing something with a toddler first and anything else a distant second. Kuzminki apparently has some interesting old estates and churches to visit, but we saw none of it. Most of the park is forest and lakes, and Mila took her time running around, blowing dandelions, and the like. We spent a good portion of our day at a simple playground where our kid discovered the unique fun of pushing her toy stroller up and down some planks.



Eventually, Mila actually wound down and decided to take a nap. This is a big deal, because lately she's uncovered some additional power source inside herself and has become increasingly convinced that she doesn't need to nap. She conked out for a little while though -- all that running up and down on the playground, obviously -- which was enough time for us to get shashlik...



I have to say that after all this time here, shashlik is probably my favorite thing about Russia. These are little chunks of marinated pork grilled over an open fire, with a side of piquante tomato sauce with cilantro, and often served with lavash, vegetable kebabs and some pickled goods...





A city park, summer, and meat grilled on sticks served on plastic is hard to beat (even if it may not look appetizing in pictures!)



On the way back, Mila fed ducks for the first time. I have to say, she's got quite an arm for her age.





(looking east over the pond)

Arbus season

Right on time, every street crossing and Metro entrance in Moscow has their own temporary pen of fresh watermelon from the Astrakhan region...

But would he put mayonnaise on salad?

This may be just another effort by a multinational corporation to introduce a new processed snack food into a the market, but at its heart this ad is pure Russian kookiness. Brazilian football superstar Ronaldhino is in line at an airport, and tries to steal potato chips from a Russian girl. She recognizes him, and makes him repeat after her: "I love mushrooms and sour cream." Not only is this a flavor combo I think only a Russian could love, I especially like the aggressive pushing of native foodways regardless of how untranslatable they are (kind of like when Olga tries to get me to eat salo). I also don't think Ronaldhino's people told him what was going on when he showed up on the set, giving it all a certain method-acting realism. Although I've never had this flavor of Lays chips -- and don't plan to keep an eye out for them -- the 'bacon' and 'green onion' varieties are actually really good.

Cherry season

The arrival of the first batch of fresh cherries created a bit of a logjam at the entrance of the new Alye Parusa one day earlier this month. Several crates of chereshnya from Turkey and Greece had been dropped just past the metal detectors, and folks were picking through them with great care and enthusiasm. Granted, there is a logjam there most of the time -- the store assumes that because they have so much space that everyone can just go ahead and take a gigantic cart, regardless of what they are actually going to buy. No small carts, certainly no baskets, just the shopping cart equivalent of Hummers.

Since I’m still a cautious shopper here, I watched as one cagey old babushka dug around among the boxes and took from the one she did when she was done. They were very good. A few weeks later, we were treated when the first vishnya from Russia arrived. These are completely different creatures, though they look just like familiar black cherries. They are more tart, and taste rather like berries. This is a photo, by the way, of Olga’s hand snatching away yet another cherry as we enjoyed a pre-dinner snack. You have to be very quick if you want any when Olga is around.

In America we are quite alienated from our food supplies because we have air-shipped fruits from all corners of the earth arriving freshly waxed at Stop n’ Shop everyday. You start to loose track with the seasons when this happens. But you really see it here. I remember during our last visit here in summer 2005 when the watermelons all arrived, as if at once. For a few days, every road crossing had a giant bin of arbus for sale.

Without coffee

“The best Maxim I know in this life is, to drink your Coffee when you can, and when you cannot, to be easy without it.” – Jonathan Swift.

The hardest adjustment to living here has easily been going without coffee. This is a tea-drinking part of the world, and that’s that.

I’ve been trying to make the best of the situation. The machine on the left is the height of Khrushchev era consumer technology. This coffeemaker was actually a wedding gift my in-laws received, and only rarely used since. I imagine the Soviet designer setting down to work out the details of this thing shortly after someone explained to him roughly how a percolator works, and with a distant memory of a cappuccino machine he'd seen in a movie.

To operate this thing, you put ground coffee in a metal filter at the bottom and screw it to the bomb-shaped top. You add water to the bomb and plug it in. To get coffee in any reasonable amount of time you have to boil the water first before you add it, and before the process completes you must unplug the thing and carefully screw off the top to let out the steam. I don’t know what will happen if you don’t, but my father-in-law is quite insistent it must be done, and since he’s a physicist I trust his judgment. The final product that dribbles into the carafe is pretty awful. It doesn’t help that Russian coffee is dry and overroasted, and would be thrown away as ruined in the West.

Allegedly, coffee is becoming popular here as a western affectation, but I don’t see it. From what I can tell, Russians still see it as an evening beverage, something that must go with sweets. And if you are at a restaurant or someone’s home, if you ask for coffee you are likely to get a cup of Sanka instant -- without even an apology. Of course, I remember all those times in the States when Olga would ask for tea and get a Lipton teabag and a cup of tepid water. I guess we are even.

Living in America, I had come to believe that instant coffee was an idea dead and all but buried. So the sheer market penetration of instant coffee is nothing short of astounding. The most alienating moments I’ve had in Russia have been looking over the shelves and shelves of instant coffees (I haven’t had the guts to try the ‘MacCoffee’ pack I bought the other day. I just appreciate the mash-up of Americana on the packaging).

Good coffee and watching baseball are what I miss most after only two and a half weeks here. Back home I buy single-origin blends and meditate on the differences between Ethiopian Yirgacheffe and Costa Rican Tarrazu. My coffee grinder is perhaps my favorite kitchen possession. That said, I’m hesitantly coming around to the charms of tea. Fortunately, Russians make their tea very strong, and they take it seriously enough as a culture that the stuff you can buy cheap at the store is pretty decent.