This non-American Life

The New York food post 2010

Our last trip to New York City was a whirlwind of friends, family, and food, topped off with a little bit of art and some volcano drama. Here were some of the culinary highlights from this time around (if you don’t feel like reading the whole post, scroll to the bottom for the best restaurant of the trip).

We arrived in New York exhausted and much later than scheduled, but dammit we we’re going to miss a single NYC meal opportunity. We fell asleep into our delivered Mexican food, and then dreamed about living in a city where one can have Mexican food delivered. Mmmmmm.

Daniel’s Bagel. It’s what’s for breakfast.

Vatan: classy* all-you-can-eat vegetarian Indian food. Instead of making you collect your food at an undignified buffet, at Vatan they bring each person a platter of starters and a platter of mains; you can request more of anything you’d like and the server will bring it to you. Vatan was closed for renovations during our last trip to the city, so I was extra happy to see it open again.

Delicious sushi at a great price at Hane Sushi.

A casual brunch at Cafe Guy & Gallard – a frittata, scallops on polenta. Quite delightful for the price, and quite a change from Europe, where it is apparently against the law to serve more than three scallops on the same plate.

A quick and cheap vegetarian lunch at Red Bamboo. Many of the dishes (such as this veg version of a philly cheese steak) were based on meat substitutes, and they tasted better than they looked.

Fancier sushi at Sushiden in midtown. Plenty good, but seemed overpriced given the sushi we had had a couple days before at Hane.

Bluebell Cafe. A relatively new place that hooked us up with some yummy macaroni and cheese, grilled asparagus, and crab cakes one evening.

Noodly soup and fun cocktails were had at Nooch.

Eggs Florentine and fluffy pancakes for breakfast at Friend of a Farmer.

Two kinds of brownies and raspberry flan at the very exclusive and invitation-only Auntie Dor’s.

We were so delighted every time glasses of icy water were served to us. Yay America!

The absolute culinary highlight this time around was the five-course tasting menu at Pure Food & Wine. Each dish was creative and delicious; the fact that it consisted entirely of raw vegan ingredients was downright amazing. I think their version of creme fraiche was even better than the real thing, and their ice creams left nothing to be desired.

Had we been a little more diligent with the camera, this meal would have earned a blog post all its own. Maybe next trip.

Still hungry? You can keep drooling over the food from our 2008 trip to New York.

What’s your favorite place to eat in NYC?

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* For some reason I felt the urge to work the word “classy” into this post. Probably because I have been watching too much Jersey Shore.

9 comments

Tags: food, New York, NYC, restaurants, travel, USA, vegetarian restaurants, vegetarianism

Hooray for Dollywood

In order to preempt what would surely become FAQs, there are two things I will make clear at the outset of this post:

1. There really is a place called Dollywood.
2. I really did go there. Jealous yet?

You may share your boob jokes in the comments.

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There is a special little part of the Great Smoky Mountains where the peanuts are boiled, the t-shirts are air-brushed, and the museums are upside-down. There is so much to see and do in this little pocket of heaven, but the ultimate little piece of kitschy goodness had eluded me until now. Dollywood is a theme park dedicated to thrill rides, folksy crafts, music, and the glorification of God for putting Dolly Parton on this earth. Kettle corn, too.

We had the good fortune of visiting during the ‘Festival of Nations.’ Given the homogeneity of the park guests, it was nice to see a little diversity. Check out this charming young Italian lad:

In addition to the regular park performers such as the Kingdom Heirs (presumptuous much?), the Festival of Nations involves performances from groups from all around the world. We sat down for an acappela show. After a promising first number, one of the young African men on stage started talking about how his life was changed when Christian missionaries came to his little village and shared the love of Jesus with them. We left to go find something that would calm our twisting stomachs, such as a roller coaster. Luckily there were lots of those.

Many of the rides have ‘example cars’ outside the entrance, which larger guests are encouraged to try out for size.

The guided tour of Dolly Parton’s tour bus was led by her number one fan, a local lady who could not say enough wonderful things about the star. As we left the bus she called out that we should be sure to find lunch in one of the park’s many restaurants. “Everything’s been baptized in grease and is absolutely scrumptious!”

I do have one bone to pick with Dolly. The museum in the park – the one covering Dolly’s life journey from poor country girl to international singing superstar? It’s called Chasing Rainbows. Dammit, that’s what I was going to call my museum. She stole my name. Now where will I put my collection of amply-bosomed sequined dresses?

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What will the museum that showcases your life story be called?

19 comments

Tags: Dolly Parton, Dollywood, Tennessee, travel, USA

Eating New York

Every visit it’s the same… not enough meals in the day to eat everything I want to in New York. After briefly considering adding a 4th and 5th meal to my days, I resign myself to the fact that I can’t go to all my old favorites and try lots of new places all in the same trip. Alas, some food must go uneaten. At least we squeezed in most of the essential food groups this trip: the Mexican group, the sushi group, the cannoli group, the martini group. And we also made it out to my aunt’s house for a feast that, as usual, rivaled the fare of the yummiest of Manhattan’s eateries. Speaking of which, these are the ones we visited this time around:

Amber* – tragically hip, colorful sushi bar. Good martinis. I wish Munich had places like this.

L’Annam – basic Vietnamese food. Our re-introduction to American portion sizes.

El Parador* – yummy, elegant Mexican. As I am not particularly elegant when it comes to Mexican food, I found my dish a little lacking in the copious-amounts-of-melted-cheese category, but otherwise everything was delicious. Margaritas!

Cho Dang Gol - a Korean restaurant specializing in homemade tofu. Happy vegetarian.

2nd Ave Deli – Jewish deli food at its most famous. No longer located on 2nd Ave. Fresh pickles. Gigantic portions.

The Smith – brunchy. Decent cocktails.

Obika* – I was thrilled to come across this familiar sign in NYC. Obika is a fresh mozzarella bar started in Rome which opened a branch in Milan while we lived there (best happy hour snacks ever). While the NYC location is much less fancy than its chic Italian counterparts, the mozzarella is just as heavenly.

Noodletown* – Chinatown at its noodliest. Loved the veggie dumplings. And the noodles.

The Porter House (Columbus Circle) – fancy NYC steakhouses offer surprisingly good eats for vegetarians, since they tend to take their vegetable side dishes (and cocktails) very seriously. The Porter House’s dirty martinis were not as fab as I had hoped, but the food was pretty good. The steak house we ate at last year was better, but I can’t remember its name.

And on to dessert…

Chinatown Ice Cream Factory – black sesame ice cream = yummy!

La Bella Ferrara – standard Little Italy bakery for all my cannoli needs.

Grom* – another favorite from Italy which has been recently exported to New York. The prices at the NYC location were kind of ridiculous, but it was worth it for a little taste of their heavenly gelato. I was too busy eating to take pictures, but you can get an idea from the last photo in this post.

Puck Fair – OK, so beer isn’t really a dessert, but I wanted to mention this cozy, fun bar we visited for a couple pints of ale. Mmmmm… ale. (Don’t go getting all upset now, Germany – I like your beer, too.)

What are your favorite places to eat and drink in NYC?

* denotes my favorite eats of this trip.

22 comments

Tags: New York, restaurants, travel, USA

Where did my New Year’s go?

I lost it somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, in one of those unimportant time zones where nobody lives.

As consolation prize, we happened to catch the test release of confetti at Times Square a few days ago.

Speaking of Times Square, you couldn’t pay me to spend New Year’s there, but it was a nice place to play around with our new grown-up (ie, SLR) camera. Hooray for wide angle!

Here’s wishing you a fabulous 2009 in which all your wildest dreams come true.

6 comments

Tags: holidays, New York, travel, USA

Greetings from midtown

Back to our regularly scheduled blogging in a couple days…

5 comments

Tags: New York, travel, USA

Expat bloggers for change

Oh boy did we miss some, um, interesting political news coming out of the homeland during our vacation. Usually I take in all of my US news filtered through the brilliant brain of Jon Stewart in order to make it more palatable, but this time I had to learn about things the hard way: from CNN. At least it was CNN international, which is mildly more intelligent than the US version, but still, not good.

The addition of Sarah Palin into the election mix is too much for me to handle. It makes me so angry I could kick a puppy. I feel personally assaulted by this choice. How dare you take an idea so dear to me (a woman president) and twist it around into something so revolting, Mr. McCain? I feel like I’ve been put through some sort of Clockwork-Orange-style reconditioning.

Jon Stewart, can you make it all better?

Anyway, given my inability to handle such topics like an adult, you probably won’t find me blogging too much about US politics here (beyond encouraging you to register to vote if you’re a US citizen). But plenty of other expat bloggers are speaking up, and I’m happy to see them do it:

• Snooker tells us about her new toy, a Caribou Barbie.
• Astroyoga shows a lot more patience in describing what’s icky about Republicans than I ever could.
• Heza wants you to vote, too.
• from Yelli: Aboogaboogabooga! Watch out for those scary European ideals, Republicans. Affordable healthcare and usable public transportation, OH NO!
• Naechstehaltestelle is not such a fan of Ms. Palin, either.

19 comments

Tags: thoughts, USA

Much love for San Diego

This trip to San Diego was for a family wedding. I really didn’t want to go. Having spent six weeks in the US at the end of 2007, I felt no desire to return to the States again so soon. Especially to somewhere as far away as California – 15 hours of flying each way. I hate long flights. But in the end, I couldn’t justify missing out on this celebration and the opportunity to see so many family members in one place at one time (some of whom I hadn’t seen for many years).

And I’m very glad we went. Not only was it great to hang out with folks, but we also ended up liking San Diego itself, much to our surprise. It’s a very cute city, and the beautiful beaches are plentiful. The weather managed to be warm enough for swimming in the sea yet cool enough for me sit on the beach in the sun (and we all know how much I hate the sun). And Tower23, the hotel with the cool fire pit, made a great backdrop for the first half of our stay. I even started imagining how fun it would be to live so close to the ocean for a year or so, eating Mexican food and shopping at Trader Joe’s to our hearts’ content. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

“All joking aside, don’t move back.” The sternly-delivered unsolicited advice came from our friends we met for dinner on the second night, American friends who moved from Zurich to San Diego around the same time that we moved from Zurich to Munich. It seems that the temptations of southern California aren’t quite enough to make up for the downsides of living in Bush’s America.

We had a secondary goal of abusing the exchange rate and using the American banana currency to stock up on clothes and electronics on this trip. We were only partially successful at this, since we ended up spending more time at the beach and less time at the mall. The mild food poisoning we were suffering on our last free day there didn’t exactly put us in the mood to shop, either. Sign of a bad wedding caterer: guests all have mysterious stomach problems the next day.

At least the wedding itself was a blast. Especially the photo booth! Note to Italian wedding vendors: start offering more photo booths, fewer balloon bouquets.

12 comments

Tags: travel, USA

The fire pit

To answer the questions about the last photo in my San Diego post, I give you… a video:

The Fire Pit from zurika on Vimeo.

This was the fire pit at the fancy beach-front hotel where we stayed for the first part of our trip. The sand was configured differently each night, but this one was definitely my favorite. I could have watched it for hours.

10 comments

Tags: California, San Diego, travel, USA

Not much to do in California at 6 am…

…except walk on the beach, or sit on the sofa on the balcony drinking coffee and staring at the ocean. Which really aren’t such bad options, once you get out of the must-make-the-most-of-time-in-US mode.

Although it’s been a mere six months since our last trip to the US, we’re still having waves of bewilderment about this strange country and its strip malls full of cheap nail salons and Trader Joe’s. The jetlag is adding to that, I’m sure. Some of my brilliant observations over the past 24 hours:

• Everybody here is speaking English!

• You’re refilling my coffee?
• I can’t drink a beer on the beach? Why the hell not?
• What is this? We didn’t ask for the check…
• Turn off that air conditioner! Do you want me to get sick????

Alright, I’m TOTALLY kidding on that last one. I’m still an American, you know.

After 23 hours of traveling, my weary brain was confused to end up speaking German with the guy checking us into the hotel (who happened to be from Munich). Fortunately he was the perfect person to tell us where we could watch the German-Turkey game* the next morning (see photo above). And I thought I’d never have a use for a big American sports bar. I’m sure the 10-person crowd of mostly German expats at the bar was a far cry from the scene in Munich, and I’m quite sad to be missing out on all the excitement at home. It’s going to take a lot of Mexican food, dirty martinis, and free coffee refills to console me. And perhaps another walk on the beach before breakfast.

* WTF was up with those feed outages during the second half of the game? And what’s worse, we were forced to watch inane American commentator banter in the gaps. Switzerland, I am deeply disappointed with you. Hang your head in shame.

28 comments

Tags: travel, USA

Uncounted

Last night we attended a Democrats Anonymous Abroad meeting here is Munich, where we watched and discussed the documentary Uncounted. The film explores the ways in which the outcomes have been manipulated in recent US elections, how vast quantities of people were not allowed to vote, and how vast quantities of cast votes went uncounted. It is hard to watch, deeply disturbing, and important. I encourage every American to watch this documentary. Here’s the trailer:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nJz09T0HME]

You can order a region-free DVD from the Uncounted website by following the instructions for a special request. I also encourage Americans living overseas to register to vote from abroad. It’s easy!

7 comments

Tags: expat life, USA