I don't have time to post today but I have to link to this article on the Ruland's cow cuz the picture of it skydiving is crazy! Here's an article on the new "wine lounge and urban kitchen" (could they fit more meaningless buzz words into the name of one establishment?-i guess they could if they put luxury in there somewhere). Nevertheless I'm excited to check this place out.
Lastly, our Liberian correspondent has a request:
Heckasac readers:
In your travels around the globe, I need your help in assembling a database of fake/questionable/generally not-quite-Mexican Mexican food products/restaurants/experiences/etc. around the world. I especially want photos of products, and restaurant reviews.
Like, here in Liberia the other day I bought some Lebanese tortillas, with the labels written in Arabic. I'm glad to have them, but they were pretty strange. Kinda grey and paper-ish.
Another example is the "Mexican" restaurant in London where they sell a dish called Squidgy Cheese, which is a big bowl of cheddar served with a spoon.
When i get a good mass of stuff, I want to put up a website.
liberialedger@yahoo dot com
hopefully I'll find something good for this in Tokyo
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20 comments:
In Tokyo, the only place I found with Mexican food was Shakeys Pizza. They still exist there. It's thought they originated in Japan -- even though they have a poster that gives the history of it starting in Sacramento.
She-man Rand and I had a pizza (they come with corn and mayo if you'd like) and nachos. The waitress said something really fast, so Dave said "hai" which is a generic "yes, okay, whatever, I heard you" thing. She pulled out 2 spoons and crushed the nachos while mixing them.
Order the Sacremento Drink (yes, it's misspelled). It's pretty good.
I also had nachos in Cairns, Australia which was generic Doritos with marinara sauce. The best and worst 5 bucks I've ever spent on "food".
I had a burrito in Nottingham that was made with lentils.
I ate a "chimichanga" in Berlin that was had some sort of brown gravy within. It was still good.
That's how I roll.
the mexican food section in nottingham stores is basically a box of really cheap corn taco shells and a very expensive can of refried beans. i'd get all the whole ingredients at a health food store and cook up a mexican feast for matt, tom and neil every time i went out. the hardest thing to find was the dried pinto beans so i'm not surprised they put lentils in the burrito.
Never had Mexican in the UK like Leon and Alice but it would've been great to have stumbled upon a Mexican restaurant while there just to see how they do it so far away from choice ingredients. I've had Chinese in London though, and it was great. There's probably very little local variation wherever you find a Chinese restaurant. I remember my dad talking about stumbling on a Chinese restaurant in Panama during a canal crossing as a Merchant Marine in the late 1940s. He said the proprietor was surprised and glad to have a fellow Toisan speaker wander into the joint.
I've had fake Super Burritos in NYC though. It was from a place called Benny's Burritos and their claim to fame was offering authentic "Mission style burritos." Everything about it was subpar and it had some kind of weird canned sauce poured over it. It was a yuck.
Pres,
SASSF
Smiller & Becky,
If and when you guys make it to Antwerp, this place is kind of worth checking out for a laugh.The food is mediocre, but the drinks were great. Duvel goes pretty well with guacamole, right?
Tropicos
When I lived in BE, this was the single hottest restaurant in the country. We waited three months and still couldn't get a reservation. Finally, on our honeymoon, Mark and I got a reservation and of course it failed to live up to the hype. I don't think they did anything horrible, like putting Gouda in the enchiladas. The guacamole was surprisingly great though.
I love an astrological Brazilian-Mexican restaurant (although sac is soooo saturated with them right now) so I'll be there. I think we're going to go next spring. You telling me that you can drive across Belgium in three hours made me much more eager to drive from brewery to brewery, hangin' with the monks.
What, no comments on the groovy new L Bar so Adolf Hummer's pod people will have yet another place in midtown to fraternize? Jeez, where to start?
All I know is that it's good for my former emplyer that Tubby the Wine Snob moved to San Francisco, because they'd have a real problem getting the paper out every Tuesday if that place was, what three blocks away?
For me the jury's still out on that wine bar. You can enjoy wine without being a "wine snob" and a bar that serves it is a nice place to do that. Most bars around town barely serve wine or if they do it's really gross, and I don't like hard liquor, so I like wine bars. 58 degrees is a pretty nice place to get a glass. I just got an email from them that they waive the corkage on sundays now, so that you can buy a bottle and have it with your food with no additional fee. That's a good deal.
There's actually a fair amount of decent Chinese food in Panama/Costa Rica because, like the Gold Rush/transcontinental railroad/etc here, a lot of Chinese were brought over to help build the canal. I remember going to a little place in San Jose, CR that was like a tacqueria (complete with Spanish-speaking soaps on the mounted TV) except that it was Chinese food. Spanish-speaking Chi-Ticans. It was cool...
-Jed
"I remember my dad talking about stumbling on a Chinese restaurant in Panama during a canal crossing as a Merchant Marine in the late 1940s. He said the proprietor was surprised and glad to have a fellow Toisan speaker wander into the joint."
In New Zealand, they used kidney beans instead of pintos in the burrito. -Alisha
Jed writes:
There's actually a fair amount of decent Chinese food in Panama/Costa Rica because, like the Gold Rush/transcontinental railroad/etc here, a lot of Chinese were brought over to help build the canal.
----------------------
Yea, I have kin in Venezuela by way of the Dominican Republic. They didn't go there to build canals though--they went there to become grocers and run supermercados. The Dry Goods trade courses thru the blood of both sides of my family...
Pres,
SASSF
Last night was burritos with hummus and chicken.The Tortilla`s were homemade.The chiken dashed with yaktori sauce and the hummus beans were canned but blended at home with squeezed lemon.In Kumamoto there is a van that sells turkish kebabs wrapped in a pita.He throws thousand island dressing or something near that on the kebabs.Okinawa has something called Taco Rice..It`s taco flavored meat thrown in rice and veggies with mayo and hot sauce squirted together.Back in the states it`s called a Taco Salad.There`s a mexican restuarant called del sol in kamitori area of kumamoto.It is fairly legit as the food is made by some spanish and hispanic/latino cooks.I drank mescal there and ate the worm.Nice Folks and the place looks like mexico inside--they have huge video screen playing norteno or rock en espanol there.I haven`t been there in awhile.I went to a mud onsen on sunday which was a public bath in southern Aso.Famous place where people go to for the cure all..It`s called jigoku which means hell...jay
I went to a Mexican restaurant in Trondheim, Norway that was incredibly strange. It was about 10 years ago, so I don't remember it that well. All the very blond and white Norwegian floor staff were in "Mexican" attire. For some weird reason they had gumbo on the menu. For some even stranger reason I ordered it. Even though I'd been a chef for about 5 years by then, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what kind of deranged brew of ingredients had created the dish. It was almost as though they had made a black roux (literally black) and put some veggies, rice and sausage in it. This thick black goo bound it all together and there was a puddle of oil about a 1/2 inch deep in the bowl that sort of leeched out of the black mass. I think the margaritas were ok, though.
JD
good stuff folks...
Spring is a great time to trip around the low countries, eurorail and clean hotels abounds.
i used to live near bruxelles and in springtime the fruit beers come out~~framboise stella artois is divine. there are also beaucoup de mejicanos brasseries that will feed you strange ideas of food.
Mr chef above~~i bet that gumbo was a blood soup in reality...
too rich:
"For some weird reason they had gumbo on the menu. For some even stranger reason I ordered it."
classic jtd, there.
Hey, I am doing my part to improve Mexican foodstuffs abroad...the bulk of my job is bringing chef trainees to live and train in the US, learning, of ALL things, Mexican (as well as Italian and other culturally popular types of foods.) That said, there are plenty o' Mexican places in Itaewan, Seoul and I had a weird shrimp taco/bean donut thing in Belo Horizonte, although the food itself is from Bahia. It probably gave me a microbial infection, but it was pretty interesting.
that shrimp taco bean donut thing is acarajé, the classic street food of the northeast of brasil. i love them!
imagine the scene: a bunch of plump matrons dressed all in white, crouched around a cooking fire on the sidewalk. they take a big ball of ground-up black eyed peas and spices, make it into a football shape, fry it in red palm oil and let it cool. then they cut it in half like a sandwich roll, slather the inside with some kind of complex hot chili sauce, and throw in a bunch of crunchy sauteed shrimp. they wrap it in paper and hand it to you.
you eat it, you get sick, you throw up, you go back for more.
I had nachos in a pub in Scotland and they were not terrible. They consisted of tortilla chips, cheese and a very spicy salsa. It's worth mentioning that this was after standing witness to the afore mentioned lentil burrito in Nottingham. Scottish nachos ruled in comparison.
Niki
Just visited a Mexican restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia. On their menu they had Mexican Pizza next to Amok (a Khmer dish with coconut fish dish served in banana leaf).
I'll send you the photos Josh.
David
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