Tag Archives: travel
La Maison Mère
When you think Parisian food, do you think filet mignon or pastrami? Tarte au chocolat or cheesecake? If the answer is the former, it’s time to revisit Paris, because the latest dining trend sweeping the city is cuisine new yorkais.
Traveling across the Atlantic to patronize ever-encroaching American chains like Starbucks is not recommended, but new Parisian places like Marcel and La Maison Mère are worth a visit to experience the French take on delicatessen classics. Basically imagine a Cordon Bleu student interning at Katz’s, and you’ve got the picture. (more…)
Puerto Rico Eats: The Luquillo Kiosks
Not far from the El Junque rainforest in Puerto Rico is a mecca of sorts for Puerto Rican street food. On the northeast coast, sun worshippers are drawn to the town of Luquillo and nearby Playa Fortuna for the long stretches of a beautiful public beaches. The only thing missing was a place to feed everyone, and so the kiosks of Luquillo sprang up, forming a ramshackle assortment of sheet metal and concrete structures between highway and beach. Flip flops, drinks in lopped off coconuts, and dozens of fried snacks are all for sale in mom-and-pop stands, some of which have been passed down through the generations.
Navigating the bonanza of treats from the 50-plus stands near the beach can be daunting, but it’s also hard to go wrong. Most of the proprietors speak English as well as Spanish and can tell you what’s inside the various fried shapes under the glass. Choose your kiosk by the number of locals frequenting one or the other and by the house specialty, usually listed prominently on the menu or the wall. Or you could do what we did last weekend, and just go from kiosk to kiosk and eat whatever looks good. (more…)
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Tagged bars, beef, Puerto Rico, seafood, travel
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Aux Fins Gourmets, Paris
As entertaining as it is to visit new, trendy restaurants in Paris, it would be criminal to spend a week there and not eat at least one meal in a classic bistro. Thus, we descended upon the 51-year-old Aux Fins Gourmets in the Seventh one night, drawn by the restaurant’s signature dish, duck confit.
Like most traditional French bistros, Aux Fins Gourmets is brightly lit and convivial. A mostly local crowd filled the place at around 9pm, the standard dinner hour here. There are not a lot of surprises at this neighborhood place, but that’s exactly the point. It was an oasis of calm on a busy Saturday night on the Left Bank. (more…)
La Société, Paris
Towards the end of our meal at this newish Parisian restaurant across from the church of Saint Germain, flashbulbs started popping nearby. Usually this is an indication that tourists are taking photos of themselves in the restaurant, but not here. The tables of German editors, Swedes, and a handful of French fashion types wouldn’t dare. It was the paparazzi, who had been waiting outside for hours to catch models arriving and leaving the restaurant, ushered into the night by black SUVs.
I have no idea how we got a table here. Perhaps it helps to show up the night before, reasonably well-dressed and speaking French, and ask for a reservation in person, as we did. But on a quiet Sunday night, when most of Paris was shuttered, La Société was the place to be. (more…)
The New "It" Food in Paris? Le Cheeseburger
Food fads look even stranger when viewed through the eyes of a foreigner. Like the as-yet-unexplained gin and tonic craze last year in Barcelona (one bar’s sign read: “17 Different Kinds of Gin & Tonic!”), the cheeseburger fad is taking Paris by storm. Though it has gotten the most press because of Ralph Lauren’s new gourmet cheeseburger restaurant on Boulevard Saint-Germain, “Le Ralph’s,” the cheeseburger craze started with young, hip kids in Paris before a big name designer usurped it.
We decided not go to “Le Ralph’s” after one look at the fancy brass-framed menu outside. Le Cheeseburger: 27€. Le Hot dog: 15€. Le Club sandwich (a runner-up for most faddish American food in Paris): 20€. If I’m going to spend more than $30 for a beef dish in Paris, it had better be a steak. (more…)
Coinstot Vino
On the same pedestrian walkway is the relatively undiscovered Coinstot Vino, another bar au vins with small plates. This one has a much bigger selection of tapas, most priced under 10€. A creamy, delicious burrata (6€) arrived with a salad sprinkled with pickled red pepper, giving just the right contrast to the dish.
Racines
Dining options in Paris used to be quite rigid: a restaurant, a bistro, a brasserie or a cafe, and not much else in between. But the small plates phenomenon that hit other cities across Europe and the U.S. is also taking root here, and in France, it’s by way of the Basque region.
Racines and Coinstat Vino are two of several new bars au vins with a focus on food. Hidden away on Passeg aux Panoramas, a pedestrian walkway in the Second Arrondissment, Racines offers haute country food like a filet mignon of pork. (more…)
The Net Result, Martha’s Vineyard
Still reeling from the $23 price tag of a pint of clams at the Bite, we approached seafood shack the Net Result in Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard with caution. This combination take-out joint and fish market gets their catch daily from Larsen’s in Menemsha, so they could charge a lot for the fresh quality. But we were pleasantly surprised to find some of the best prices on the island at this casual picnic spot with views of the harbor.
Don’t expect a lot of frills here; just get in line and follow the various instructions on hand-written signs around the room. (more…)
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Tagged lobster rolls, Martha's Vineyard, seafood, travel
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Atria, Martha’s Vineyard
There’s no shortage of fancy restaurants on Martha’s Vineyard – the only problem is choosing just one when you only have a few nights on the island. Alchemy is a perennial favorite, but if you want to get away from the hoi polloi in the center of Edgartown on weekend nights, head to Atria for its patrician atmosphere.
At Atria, whitewashed Adirondack chairs spot the gracious side lawn, where you can settle in for drinks or dinner outside, and inside there’s a dining room hung with antique fish prints and furnished with dark spindle chairs, plus a downstairs pub, Brick House, that serves up burgers, beer on tap and live music. It’s the sort of place you can imagine the Kennedys going (but that may be just because several people in the clubby dining room that night actually looked like Kennedys). (more…)
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Tagged bars, beer, Martha's Vineyard, travel
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On-Island Vs. Off-Island: Keeping It Local on Martha’s Vineyard
One look inside the market at Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard and you’ll see the crux of a food movement gaining ground here. Beets, baby squash, wax beans, corn and many more vegetables and fruit that come from this large working farm are labeled with a yellow “on-island” sign; anything shipped in from “off-island” gets a generic-looking white sign.
The local, sustainable food movement is nothing new, but on this vacation destination off the Cape it takes on a particularly political spin. As chain stores like the Super Stop & Shop on Main Street land on the island and suck in summer people and locals alike, farmers markets and local specialty food shops have lobbied to keep money on-island, not moving offshore towards some far-flung corporate entity. But can even the most well-intentioned consumer ever buy mostly local? (more…)
The Bite, Martha’s Vineyard
It may look pretty basic, but this famous seafood shack on the road down to Menemsha draws people from near and far. One one side of us, a family chatted in Italian, and on the other, a couple of summer people despaired the outage of fried scallops so early in the afternoon. What you see is what you get: a shack, sodas from a machine, fried seafood and some picnic tables, but there’s nothing ordinary about the quality of the Bite’s fried clams.
This seemingly simple dish is actually easy to mess up, and therefore I usually avoid it. More often than not, fried clams come out listless, dry and tasteless, with a leaden, greasy crust. But lesser fry cooks everywhere could learn from the Bite, where the batter is light and slightly spicy with a hint of cayenne and the finest grinding of sea salt, the crunch satisfying but not overwhelming, and the clams themselves still plump, bursting with juiciness and served whole. (more…)
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Tagged Martha's Vineyard, seafood, travel
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Larsen’s Fish Market, Martha’s Vineyard
You could plunk down a good deal of money for dinner at the fancy Home Port restaurant in Menemsha, Martha’s Vineyard, a tiny fishing town known for its beautiful sunsets. Or you could enjoy the sunset as the families who have been coming here for years do: bring your beach chairs and wine and make it a picnic.
About that wine: don’t forget to buy it from Edgartown or Oak Bluffs, since they don’t sell it “up island,” which is completely dry due to some rather antiquated blue laws. But wait until you get to Menemsha to buy your dinner, or you’ll be missing out on one of the town’s main attractions. Larsen’s, half seafood store, half take-out shop, dishes out lobsters, clams and oysters just hours after they’ve been plucked from the sea. This market also acts as the wholesaler supplier to many of the seafood places on the island, so when you come here, you’re getting it at the source. (more…)
Cantler’s Crab Shack, Maryland
On a recent weekend, we set out to do what so many Marylanders do as soon as the weather gets hot: head out to a crab shack to feast on piles of hard shell blue crabs.
Cantler’s holds a place of honor among crab shacks. It’s so popular that it’s even included on nautical charts of the Chesapeake Bay – all the better for getting there by boat. (more…)
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Mother’s Restaurant, New Orleans
Certain hometown restaurants inspire a kind of mania among their fans. In New Orleans, that restaurant would be Mother’s, whose po’ boy gets raves from longtime patrons of the creole lunch counter. Go here and locals will give you one important instruction about that sandwich: “Make sure you get the debris.”
As with many recent additions to New Orleans patois, this one has a traceable history. When a customer asked for the shreds of roast beef from the pan on his po’ boy, original Mother’s owner Simon Landry responded, “You mean the debris?” A sandwich was born. (more…)
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Tagged beef, lunch, New Orleans, travel
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Eat Louisiana Shrimp
To answer the question that’s on everyone’s mind: yes, there is still excellent seafood to be had in New Orleans. Much of it is top quality shrimp, crawfish, blue crab, and much of it is local. Though National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has closed 60,000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico to commercial fishing to date, 75 percent of federal waters are still safe for the shrimp and shrimpers that make their livelihood on the Gulf. As Food Safety News reports, all of the waters directly affected by the spill remained closed to commercial and recreational fishing, so no seafood from the region is at risk of oil contamination.
In other words, don’t add insult to injury by postponing or canceling a trip to Louisiana because of the oil spill. The kind folks down there will make sure you are extremely well fed during your visit. Shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, shrimp etouffee, shrimp remoulade and shrimp sandwiches are still on the menu. If there is excellent wild shrimp anywhere in the area (including Lake Pontchartrain), Louisianans will find it.
Americans also shouldn’t assume the impact of this disaster is limited to Gulf states. Nearly half the nation’s domestic seafood comes from the Gulf area, and every time BP fails to seal off the oil spill, the area of federal waters closed to commercial fishing increases. The longer-term impact on shrimp and fish lifecycles in the region is still unknown.
In the meantime, do what you can to support Gulf fishermen by buying wild-caught domestic shrimp – which have far less pollutants and do far less environmental damage than unregulated farmed or wild-caught shrimp from China, Mexico and other developing nations.
Buy wild domestic shrimp at Fresh Direct.
Future updates about the safety of Gulf seafood can be found here:
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