I have found my new breakfast obsession, and sadly, it exists only in Vietnam. Attempts to replicate it in home kitchens would fail miserably. Recently in Hoi An, Vietnam, I met up with a former culinary school instructor from New York who was working at a non-profit restaurant. Each morning we stepped out of the air-conditioned bliss of the hotel into a wave of heat, traffic noise, and repeated solicitations for “Taxi? Taxi? Motorcycle?” But the possibility of a great street food find was too enticing to pass up.
One morning we stopped by a particularly busy stall with the words “Banh Mi Op La” on the sign. Seconds later, a blaze sprang up on the stove. A cook in a snazzy fisherman’s hat gave the pan a few swivels and tossed in some salt. He repeated to the tune of 3 finished plates a minute.
My Op La arrived, a beautiful mess of runny eggs, sausage bits, onions, and tomatoes still sizzling on a thin metal plate. The baguette came on another plate, with extra slices of cucumber and enough onions to warrant a second tooth-brushing. You use the bread to sponge up the eggs and tomato, spoon some onions and meat bits on top, bite, and wait for bliss. Banh mi op la was pure comfort food heaven, not least because it seemed so similar to huevos rancheros.
Read MoreThe frequent travelers among us know that Chinese restaurants are everywhere. Once upon a time you could have visited Dublin or Dubai without seeing an Empress Garden Panda Palace or some variation, but those days are long gone. Like when writer Daisann McLane stumbled upon the Hong Kong Café in icebergian Greenland. A recent commenter on this blog put it best: "It's weird, but I always try to find the 'Chinatown' when I'm international too. I feel comfortable and at home there."
I'm a huge fan of using Flickr for research, and months ago became addicted to this fascinating Flickr pool of Chinese restaurants around the world. Here are 7 favorites:
Read MoreEd. - Say you're at your favorite Chinese take-out, feasting on moo goo gai pan and crab rangoon. "I bet they don't really eat this stuff in China," you think, recalling the Discovery Channel special on TV last month. You would be correct. But how did dishes like chow mein and the once ubiquitous chop suey, unrecognizable to anyone in China, become such so well-loved in the US? Author Andrew Coe explores this and other mysteries of the Chinese-American culinary repertoire in his new book Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, which came out this week. In today's guest post, he gives a glimpse into the past and present life of chow mein.
Somewhere in America right now, noodles are frying. The chef is preparing chow mein, which simply means “fried noodles" in Chinese. But not all fried noodles are alike. In China, the varieties of chow mein are as numerous as the regional cuisines. Some are lightly heated in the wok, while others, particularly in Guangdong province and Hong Kong, are fried in bunches in oil until they’re browned and crispy on the outer edges but still soft in the middle. It was this southern style of chow mein that was carried to the United States by the Chinese immigrants.
Read MoreLast summer when Jacob went to Budapest for a conference, he took an few hours to stroll around the city's "Chinatown." Except there wasn't much of one, at least not the kind with red-and-gold gates and tons of indistinguishable souvenir vendors - kitschy but telltale signs that a city at least tries to embrace its multicultural identity.
With Hungary, the situation is a little more complicated. Through numerous conversations with Hungarians, many of them ultra-liberal on a range of political issues, there was an underlying resentment of recent Chinese immigrants. The country's Chinese population mostly consists of Fujianese who arrived starting in the 1980s, a good portion who may have entered illegally, and who have not really integrated into Hungarian society yet. It seems like an instance of vicious-cycle tension: newcomers keeping to themselves because of societal disdain, society feeling disdain because newcomers keep to themselves. Despite this, Chinese restaurants were doing okay business, though not nearly the lunch volume as their US counterparts.
Read MoreOver the weekend, while biking to Shanghai's Silk Market, Jacob and I got lost in a maze of side streets. This was a side of Shanghai visitors seldom see. We rode past a few "free-range" chickens (with feet leashed to a pole, to prevent straying) pecking on some dirty lettuce. On the other side of the road was a scene that would never pass American health inspection, but which made my heart skip a beat.
Open air duck roasting! Now, I think Peking duck is a neat art form, but the elaborateness of the preparation, ordering, and eating gets tiring after the 20th time. Some days you just want a crispy, juicy duck without the fuss. For example, one you can pick up while whizzing by on a bike.
So what does the inside of the metal inferno look like?
Read MoreI came across this Edward Hopper painting today and, for a few minutes, tried to connect the image with the name. The painting is evocative of everything I associate with the 1920s: men in suits, chic flappers, and dim stylish interiors. Yet if you look closely, there is a terracotta teapot on the table. And try to decipher the restaurant placard outside the window. The restaurant and painting are both called "Chop Suey".
Ask Americans what comes to mind when they think of Chinese restaurants. The adjectives you'll most likely get are along the lines of cheap, quick, and dingy with fluorescent lighting. Chinese restaurants are now the culinary equivalent of love motels.
I'm not talking about banquet halls in Chinatowns that cater to the Chinese, which also tend to be lackluster. I'm talking about restaurants for the other 99.5% of America. Whether they know it or not, these greasy take-outs, Panda Expresses, and P.F. Changs serve as cultural ambassadors for Chinese food and culture. And what they represent is cheap food for the masses, not culinary sophistication.
Read MoreThis is the older version of the Chinese Scallion Pancakes recipe using yeast that was first published in 2009. For the newer version without yeast, see Chinese Scallion Pancakes.
Read MoreThe weather gods have been cruel to me. As some of you may know, I spent the last two weeks in New York and Boston; expecting normal late spring temperatures, I packed summer clothes and sandals, only to freeze the entire time. On the last day, as I rode the train to JFK for my flight out, the mercury shot up to 70s. Such is my luck as a traveler.
Of course, I returned to China, where the May forecast anywhere along the coast is best described as "sauna-like." As though on cue, my hair became as frizzy as tumbleweed. I blasted the fan and ransacked the fridge for anything cold and sugary.
No ice cream surfaced, but I did find a bottle of umeshu, Japanese plum wine, bought with brilliant foresight a few months ago. Now, I know the Japanese fruit ume is technically not the same as a Western plum, but "plum" is the closest possible English equivalent, and is the norm on most English menus I've seen. (A close second is "apricot".) Umeshu, made by fermenting the little green ume in shochu and adding a bit of rock sugar, has enough to sweetness to cut through the mild sour edge. I love that certain brands like Choya offer single or double serving pop-top bottles, with green plums floating inside.
Read MoreI had always been morbidly curious about fugu, the Japanese blowfish delicacy that is potentially lethal if incorrectly prepared. The scene in my head plays out like this: a renowned Tokyo insider brings me to a renowned secret hideaway for fugu prepared by a renowned chef. I am excited; I will blog about it, post soft-lit photos on Flickr. But the chef has an off night (fight with the wife, perhaps.) Back in my quaint Lonely Planet-recommended ryokan, three hours after the mindblowing meal, tetrodotoxin paralyzes me and I fall over. Death by gourmandism is a noble death, but still a death.
Still, there are plenty of more common ways to pass on. (Struck by Hong Kong's warp speed double deckers, for example.) And the brightly lit, white tableclothed dining room of Lei Garden, being surrounded by Cantonese chitchatting relatives, seemed to be an unlikely set-up for the last minutes of my life. So when passed the plate of dried fugu with what looked like a honey sheen, I thought nothing of plopping a few strips into my mouth.
Read MoreTravelers to Shanghai sometimes expect to find a vibrant street food scene that's on par with that of Bangkok, Singapore, Chengdu, and other tropical or subtropical Asian cities. But because of a northern-ish climate (despite the Beijing tendency to think of Shanghai as "the south") and a culture that prefers indoor eating, good street food is hard to find. Zhongshan Lu has a few lamb skewer vendors, but is mainly a tourist trap for shopping and glitzy lights. Yuyuan Bazaar, home of the over-hyped Nanxiang soup dumplings, is just a tourist trap, period.
One place is Shanghai that locals actually frequent is the Muslim market in northern Jing'an, held only on Fridays after prayer service at the Huxi mosque. Starting around 11am, vendors set up their stands of cooked lamb, nan, dried nuts and fruit, and Arabic DVDs. Not to disparage Han ethnic culture, but sometimes it's nice to plant myself in a spot where the locals don't look or speak like the 1.3 billion majority.
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