Two interesting things about oranges here:
There’s a popular Senegalese variety that is actually green and not orange.
Those are not limes!
And people sometimes peel them like apples and then suck the pulp out of them, sort of like some people do with kumquats.
No, this is not an Andy Warhol. This is an expression of the Senegalese love for chocolate spread.
It’s not that my disdain for Nescafé comes from being a coffee snob. It’s more that it just doesn’t work. As I’ve noted before, I’m super sensitive to caffeine, but I can drink seven cups of Nescafé and still feel no more awake than the second after my alarm clock goes off.
But there are really no other coffee options here, apart from a drink called Café Touba, which is sold in mini plastic cups at all the road-side kiosks (like the ones in the photo above). The coffee is ground with peppery spices and mixed with lots of sugar. I tried it. It tasted okay – though it smelled uncomfortably like Robotussin – but it had absolutely no effect on my level of alertness.
On my first Saturday here, during my stroll along the Corniche, I stopped in at a fancy hotel to see if they might have honest-to-goodness coffee. My desperation for caffeine was such that I was overjoyed to find them serving Nespresso. It tasted frothy and delicious, and more importantly, I spent the rest of the day properly wired for the first time in a week.
Since then I’ve found a pan-African / Caribbean restaurant a couple blocks from my house that also serves Nespresso, and I’ve been going every day for my daily fix. I thought the problem was solved… Until I went to the restaurant this morning only to find it closed on Saturdays until later in the evening. I am literally beside myself in my longing for a Nespresso right now. I know this is utterly ridiculous in quite a number of ways. And yet the fact remains that I about to lose it.
I feel like Annie. Every five seconds something prompts me to sing to myself, “I think I’m gonna like it here!” Continue reading
This past Saturday at about 5:30pm, I got on the subway at Union Square with the intention of stopping by my apartment to do some work before heading back downtown to Murray Hill for an 8pm dinner date.
On a normal day, each commute would have taken no more than 45 minutes, leaving me with an hour to spend at home. On this particular day, train delays and reroutings conspired to keep me underground for two hours and transport me, very much without my knowledge or consent, all the way to the Bronx – but never to my actual home. At some point during my subterranean wanderings I realized I had run out of time even to run upstairs to change into a warmer coat and come back down again, so I abandoned the plan and switched to the southbound platform.
20+ miles, four subway lines, and zero actual accomplishments later (except, perhaps, exploring new frontiers of bladder control), I got off the train at Penn Station and spent ten minutes lost in a labyrinth of temporary drywall passageways. When I finally found the stairs to get above-ground, I stomped up each step like a petulant four year-old while seething, “Get me out of this city!” (Plus curses.) Walking to my friend’s house, I lowed at a flock of slow-moving women near Macy’s, “Pleaaaaassse moooooove!” and at the next crosswalk I snapped at a daydreaming pedestrian, “Watch it!” and stretched out my arms to indicate that I would shove him out of the way if he didn’t move on his own. (He did.)
I was in rare form, but instead of quickly calming down and recoiling from my behavior in horror and embarrassment, I just thought, yep, I’m way past due to take a break from New York City.
Then I arrived at my French friend’s house, where a raclette spread and the company of delightful people was waiting, and all became right with the world again. (Until it was time to take the subway back home.)
P.S. The first two things I will acquire when once more I have a stable home are an espresso machine and a raclette maker. I’ll be sleeping on an air mattress but eating well!
[Drawing: Will Laren]
I mournfully gave up coffee many years ago, when it became clear that my stomach just could not handle it. In switching to black tea I abandoned not only one of my favorite foods but also one of my favorite past-times. Because drinking coffee is an act not only of consumption but also of culture, community, and – due to my extremely sensitive nervous system – hypercaffeination.
When I visited Elsewhere, though, I realized that I could not possibly leave without partaking of the ubiquitous espresso-drinking ritual. This was quite risky, considering the state of Elsewhere’s bathrooms. But one quiet morning towards the end of my trip, I took the plunge. I headed over to an unmarked home restaurant at the top of a nondescript apartment building, parked myself at the deck bar overlooking the city and the sea, and ordered a cup of “cafe en el estilo Elsewhere-ano,” because at that point I didn’t realize it was plain old espresso everyone was drinking.
I then proceeded to spend the next two hours drinking my teeny coffee, because savoring it and the view at the same time was about as perfect an experience as you can get. I also figured that would give my digestive system time to alert me to an impending disaster before I had ingested all of the toxins. As it turned out, my body reacted to espresso quite well: I became high as a kite in the smoothest way possible, and without any intestinal distress. My guess is that my only real problem for years and years had been gluten, and in giving it up two years ago I recovered my ability to eat all sorts of other things that I used to think set me off when in fact it was just collateral damage from gluten-induced inflammation.
Since that fateful, magical day (because coffee really is magical for someone who reacts to it like cocaine), I’ve indulged in an espresso every morning. Each time I drag out a cup for twenty minutes, I experience a three-fold pleasure – the thrill of consuming what feels like it should be an illicit substance, the delight of tasting something so delicious that I thought was lost to me, and the joy of partaking in a slow, Old-World ritual that connects me culturally to two places I love – Elsewhere, where I picked up the habit, and Italy, where it was born.
Considering that my command of both French and Spanish is at a grade-school level, it seems appropriate to report on my vacations to French and Spanish-speaking countries with elementary school-style essays. Today I bring you the second installment: DF and Elsewhere edition.
Please note that I did not consult Google Translate or a living, breathing Spanish speaker for this. So what follows is not pretty, but it’s an accurate representation of where I’m at when I have only my brain and Spanish spell-check to rely upon:
He llegado por la tarde en Cuidad de México (DF) y he ido a mi hotel en el barrio Condesa. La primera noche, he conocido a mi amiga de la universidad que vive ahora en DF. En el restaurante ella me dijo que puedo beber el agua además comer los vegetales frescos, si es un bueno restaurante, porque ellos anudan ‘iodine’ a su agua y limpian todo con este agua. Aunque el más importante reglo que he escuchado para México estaba de no beber el agua, decidí de crear en mi amiga y esperar por lo mejor. O sea que la primera cosa que he comido en México estaba la más prohibida: unos hojas de una verdura con agua no-de-la-botella (no-botellado?). Continue reading
A couple of months ago I found myself out late, hungry, and in a self-indulgent mood in Midtown East. Conditions were ripe to finally go to Aquavit, the two-Michelin-star Swedish restaurant on 55th Street that I had been wanting to try for years but had never gotten around to because the last neighborhood I’d choose for an occasion is Midtown East.
So I grabbed the chance to pop in without a reservation at 9:30pm on a Tuesday and sidled up to the bar to order the tasting menu.
I love Swedish food to such a degree that even Ikea’s meatballs taste gourmet to me. So, actual gourmet Swedish food was sort of mind blowing. But the best thing about the meal was the cultural fusion that took place when I realized the man behind the bar was from Manila and I told him about my trip to the Philippines last year.
Because Joey is the classic bartender/storyteller hybrid, this led to him sharing a crazy tale about crushing on his older brother’s friend’s girlfriend as teenagers hanging out in Marcos’ abandoned office in the presidential palace on the night of the revolution (since both of their fathers worked for the opposition leader). Joey moved to America as a young man and didn’t see the girl again until a serendipitous encounter many years later. He picked right up where he left off with his crush, and after a long-distance romance, she moved to New York and they got married.
This incredible story, with too many plot twists to count, unfolded over eight courses of the tasting menu, all of which were presented like works of art.
They were almost as amazing to look at as to eat. The chef took traditional Nordic dishes and spun them in totally inventive and delightful ways. It was a (very) expensive meal but well worth it, once in a lifetime, for the experience of being transported from the everyday to the extraordinary – by way of Sweden, the Philippines, and – most surprisingly of all – Midtown East. More and more lately I’ve been reminded that even in one’s decade-plus home, it’s always possible to see the world with a foreigner’s fresh eyes.
Tonight on my way to the subway, I passed Ladurée, the Parisian macaron shop. Even though I hold as objective truth than one should never step foot in foreign outposts of shops that are beloved institutions in their home countries, I did anyway. Blame my overactive bladder and preference to use the bathroom in a fancy French café over a McDonalds: once in the door, I couldn’t help but eye the offerings. And when I noticed rose glace on the menu, the battle was over before it began. I had been on the lookout for floral-flavored ice cream above all other food in France, because I remember like it was yesterday the moment I had my first taste of fleur glace from a street vendor in Paris two decades ago. One of the best things I have ever tasted. And yet, I could not for the life of me find flower-flavored ice cream in wintry Paris. No street vendors in sight, and the shops only had rose sorbet.
All this to say, I quickly abandoned my deeply-held convictions and ordered a scoop of Ladurée’s rose glace, from an excessively sweet waitress with a Staten Island accent. It tasted delicious in the way American ice cream can taste delicious, but it was not at all like the life-altering French ice cream I had in 1993. While eating, I eavesdropped on conversations transpiring in English. I paid with dollar bills.
And I felt the looming threat of tarnishing the memory of the Ladurée in Saint Germain, where I bought macarons made more heavenly by the knowledge they came into existence in their motherland, were sold in a luxe shop that would have been guillotined during the French Revolution, and were requested in halting French from snooty employees who couldn’t be bothered with silly American customs like politeness. Ladurée should never have crossed the Atlantic.
And I should never have followed that ice cream with chocolate… but that’s a story for a different blog.
When I was in France, I tried a pastry called a merveilleux, and it was indeed merveilleux. The bottom was meringue, the top was chocolate buttercream about one degree short of being all butter and no cream, and it was covered with chocolate ganache. I’m usually not a meringue fan but in this case the combination of flaky and crunchy and creamy was heavenly. The only drawback was that it was so rich and sugary – and humongous – that even between two people we couldn’t finish it. And not finishing dessert is just about the saddest thing there is.
A few weeks after my return I went to a party at which a box of the most delightful-looking confections was being passed around. Their appearance must have added to the enjoyment of eating them: little fluffy mountains of something or other covered in delicate pink and ivory and tan and brown shavings. They looked like something out of Marie Antoinette:
But I couldn’t find the person who brought them to ask what they were and figure out whether they were gluten-free, so I never tasted them. And turning down dessert is the second saddest thing there is.
Then my subscription to a daily email for French expatriots in New York (I know I am not a French expatriot in New York) paid off, because a few weeks later it heralded the opening of the first Aux Merveilleux de Fred shop in the United States, in the West Village. It turns out the adorable little things I had salivated over at the party were a modified version – nymphettes – of the big old merveilleux I had in Alsace.
I visited the shop the next day, and though I really should have stopped at two, I ate four of them because a. they were delicious and b. it was my first week at my new job. If you’re in the city, I’d highly recommend stopping by to try them, or at least to ogle them through the store’s picture window – they really are almost as beautiful to look at as to taste. I’m expecting them to go the way of the cronut any day now…
talk foreign to me 