Peking Duck is a dish originally from Beijing, China. It is a specially roasted and basted duck, served with wheat pancakes, scallions, cucumber, and hoisin sauce. But some places, it is elevated to gold level. The first written recipe for Peking Duck is from 800 years ago. The complexities of the recipe and preparation can be read here. Our duck was served with sugar and pineapple chunks giving it a tropical and extra luxurious feel. There was also edible gold leaf on top, like a cherry on top. Surprisingly, the half duck portion only cost 48 bucks. It was enough for three people, with the addition of a few extra pancakes and some fried rice.
Private dining rooms lined up like train cabins.
We had our duck at Jiang Nan, in Queens, New York. It is subway accessible, if you want a cheap but long ride. It is located in Flushing, Queens, which is the largest unofficial chinatown in America. Our restaurant had atmospheric private rooms that took us away to a tea house in the Orient.
So good it required a photo.
Aside from the duck, we had shrimp fried rice. It is not as simple as it seemed. A really good fried rice is about the aroma — not of oil but of umami. This one was like a warm hug.
Supposedly George Washington sent produce from Mount Vernon to be sold at the Alexandria Farmers Market (I presume the “Old” came in later). The Old Town Alexandria Farmers Market has been on the same spot since 1753. Yes, you read that right. There is very little in the USA that has that sort of age (insert pun here).
Fall brings fall veg.In the downtown square of Old Town Alexandria.
A friend told me about this market and I had “been” many times when talking with her while she was walking there. But I finally went.
Apples of all types.Veg forward food.
At first I was a bit so so about it because it seemed more like just a bunch of tents set up. But then I became alright with that. Not every market can be alleyways in a souk. This market was sunny and cool on this crisp fall day.
The pie line was too long.Pumpkin is a thing in America in the fall.
Lots of people selling all kinds of things from fresh milk, apples, pies, pastries, artwork, coffee, chocolate, dumplings, cider, vegetables, hummus, and veg-forward food (vegetarian).
The sausage breakfast sandwich making factory.Good but not going to stand in line good.
I had read about the breakfast sausage sandwich from Hog Heaven. I stood in line for 30 minutes for my breakfast sandwich. It was good but not something I would stand in line for again. I guess I wish that all breakfast sandwiches were so good that a sandwich like that was the norm.
Samples are a great way to make sure you like it.
On the other hand, Coulter Farms is my new crush. Their fresh milk is so creamy and delicious that I drank a gallon (3.75 liters) in two days. They also sell cheese, yogurt, kefir, chocolate milk, chilli, meat, and granola. But, it’s about the milk. I ask them if they made cream and clotted cream and was told, “Only when there is leftover milk.” Well, I can see why there isn’t. I would drink it all.
The yellow of the butter warms my cockles.
I reached out to Coulter Farms to see if we could visit their farm in Pennsylvania. Eeeek! I got a friendly email from Ma Coulter saying that they will be opening a B&B soon. So excited!
See the crowds?
Anyway, the Old Town Alexandria Farmers market is open every Saturday, rain, shine, hot, warm, freezing, from 7-12 noon. Yes, even in the winter. Get there early.
The Korean bun hamburger and the Shin Ramyun coated fries.
Sometimes, I travel for food. I went to Minneapolis for pizza.
I only waited 15 minutes in the cold. Kim’s does not take reservations.
At Kim’s Uptown, you will the festive conclusion to the all American Korean story. Korean dishes have been making their way into American menus over the decades with bulgogi and kimchi regularly on menus but at Kim’s Uptown, Ann Kim, @annbkool, who is the coolest person one would want to grow up to be, has made a place that is elegant, warm, family-oriented, happy, and yummy. As I waited in line for Kim’s to open, people passing by were excitedly saying, “Oh look at the line, I’m so happy for her.” It was obvious that Ann Kim is a popular restaurateur here in Minneapolis. She is also a James Beard award winning chef, and Guy Fieri visited her at one of her pizza restaurants as part of his television show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.
The take on traditional Korean dishes like pork belly are well done and slightly Americanized.Shrimp pancake served with a type of kimchi made with onions and jalapenos.
May they succeed for many years and eventually franchise like all this other American food places… the rice cake and cheese was inspired, but would be even more amazing with slivers of chili and a seafood of some sort (Lobster or clams).
Mac and cheese made with Korean rice gnocchi pasta called “Tteokbokki”.
Shin Ramyun fries are nostalgic fun. Who doesn’t remember dipping one’s finger into the ramen flavor packet? The burger was good quality meat. I wish Kim’s sold those by the boxful. It was all American Korean food.
Show the waiter this photo to get the mushroom and melty cheese one and to get the pepperoni and spice one with added Calabrese chilis and garlic…
I actually came to Minneapolis for Ann Kim’s pizza place, Pizzeria Lola. The bulgogi one (she should use Korean salad instead of arugula) was not exciting but her other pizzas were excellent. If you find yourself in the area, try out these restaurants. And go to the Bronto Bar in Kim’s basement.
Pizzeria Lola has a casual vibe and is located in the suburban outskirts of town.
Every year for the last 40 (at least), the Finnish society here in the DC area, Kipinäkerho, now called Finn Spark, has put on a holiday market. It is always held in Bethesda, Maryland, at a church in the woods (Finland has a lot of woods).
Finnish prune star pastry.
There is food to buy and food to eat there. I went to buy the Karelian pies and cardamom milk bread, pulla, (like challah) and the gingerbread… almost everything was sold out by noon. Those Finns get up early!
Rye flour “dumplings” which are served with egg butter (eggs mashed with butter).A gingerbread house that sits on a cup or glass.
I also bought rye bread. Finnish rye bread is made from a mother yeast extracted from the air. This is not strong yeast so the bread is mild and flat. And dense. I recall chewing quite hard as a kid to eat this bread. Now as an adult, I love it even more because of the memories it brings me.
Memories are often the thing that makes a food delicious. Nostalgia is a strong ingredient.
Knitwear and Finnish American.More stuff for sale.
There were also other things for sale, but I was less interested in those. They were giving away free cookbooks so I took one of those. Maybe I will try a recipe. But more likely, I will wait till next year to get more gingerbread. Or I can go into Mikko’s cafe in Dupont.
Traditional woven birch bark shoes.
All five of the Nordic countries have holiday markets in the fall. I will have to catch them all next year.
One can tell that modern day Serbia was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, not only in the architecture, but also from the food.
There seemed to be a bakery or sandwich shop on every corner in Belgrade. We went to a modern one built in wood and with space to sit. Some of the ones I saw on the street seemed to be more of a walk up style.
The pastries were much like in the Viennese traditional (in Danish, danish pastry is actually called “Viennese bread” as that is where the traditional stems from). In a small town near the Hungarian border, I had a sandwich made with a simple unleavened flatbread.
There is quite a cafe coffee culture here as well but the local coffee was topped high with whipped cream. Reminded me of that time I had Sacher Torte and had to ask for it “mit schlag” — with cream.
Every culture has a dumpling and one of the dumplings of Serbia is called a “knedle.” It is a round fried ball filled with, traditionally a plum, but now made with chocolate and anything else one could imagine. The dough is boiled first and has the consistency of a matzo ball or thicker.
I was delighted to see “potage” on the menu because as I am a bit of history buff, I had seen shows about medieval cooking where everyday the peasants at potage which was anything they could find to add to their pot. In Serbia, it was a thin delicate soup. At the place we had it, it was served in mini cast iron pots. Adorable.
We had other soups as well that were simple hearty soup that for some reason is not so easy to find in many restaurants. At least not in Rome.
Another classic food is meat stew. Served with pasta and sour cream on top. Very hearty.
They have Greek salad here, but their Serbian salad is called “shopska” (spelled differently but sounds like that) which means “hat” because the salad of cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers, has a “hat” of shredded fresh cheese which is a bit like cream cheese.
Another food here is polenta (maize/corn) and I had it served as cakes topped with shredded meat. Before I lived in Colombia and Venezuela, I did not really like polenta or arepas or anything made out of cornmeal but now I have a hankering for it once in a while.
I like dairy products and one of the traditional types here is a cultured product that I think is made from the whey, a bit like kunefe in Turkey but more delicate. It was called “ayvar” and was served with toast and flossed pork.
As I hoped for, another local specialty is spicy pickled peppers, a bit like a banana pepper. One of the spiciest things I have tried in a while.
Then there is the rolled stuffed meat a bit like a chicken cordon bleu but this one was pork. The local slang term for it roughly translates to “a woman’s dream boyfriend” and it was about 10 inches long.
For dessert, one of the traditional items is called a snowball but it is more of a snow cloud or floating iceberg of meringue in custard.
Aside from traditional foods, Serbian food also includes pizza and gelato and all manner of international foods. More on that another time.
Raspberry “snippets” like Poptarts but less dry. Copenhagener/Tebirkes coated in poppyseeds. And cinnamon slice.
A danish is a pastry and my favorite one is not too sweet.
Normally, when I fly out of Copenhagen, I get a final danish at the airport. The bakery at the airport in Copenhagen is a branch of Ole & Steen, which is a franchise version of the old venerable Lagkagehuset (layer cake house).
But, New York City has four branches of this franchise! I had to visit.
Obviously, the dough and bread is different (like with NYC pizza, it’s the water, don’t ya know). The menu was also different. They still had my favorite pastry so I got two. My favorite is called “tebirkes” in Danish but they have changed it to “copenhagener” in English. It is in the first photo, covered in poppyseeds. It is a basic pastry with a subtle almond sugar paste layer inside.
The roast beef sandwich that I got was awesome with horseradish cream and rare pink roastbeef (a bit cooked in my photos because it traveled in a bag for six hours). I also bought rye bread and rye bread rolls. My eight rolls were so dense that they had to go to secondary screening at the airport.
Tak is thanks in Danish. Some Brits say, “ta” and I wish that was part of American English as well.
Lake Como is becoming more famous for George Clooney than for its other attributes. I only saw it in passing on my way to catch another train. And then, in Tirano, we found an even better dish!
The best dish of the trip. It looks blah but was like being hugged by a block of butter.
The little town of Tirano is a pitstop on the way to catch the Bernina Express, but maybe one should stay a while. We did not. We had an hour. We needed lunch. The tiny square near the train station had two eateries so we went to the nearest one. Little did we expect the food to be good.
This was the train station square.
The house specialty was homemade buckwheat noodles with cabbage, potato, and butter. It turned out to be the best dish of the whole trip.
Classics like proscuitto and fries.
As the restaurant is used to catering to tourists, I managed to get pineapple and ham added to my American pepperoni pizza. This would never happen in Rome! But, here in Tirano, we were two kilometers from Switzerland so the rules against pineapple on pizza don’t apply here.
When I saw that they had pineapple pizza, I thought I would see if I could combine my favorite mix!
The balsamic glazed steak was also something of a surprise. While we were still in Italy, we did feel some of the Teutonic sternness in our waitress. Maybe we are just oversensitive?
Other than cheese, we also had other delicious food in Switzerland. I liked the “cep” mushroom soup.
I also liked the steam carrot, broccoli, and zucchini. But, what was so Swiss were the potato rosti. Oddly, there was real cream on the dishes as well. Yay for that. I approve.
At the end of the Bernina Express, we got out at Chur, Switzerland. Supposedly the oldest town in Switzerland. We mostly enjoyed the ‘old town’ which was only 300-600 years old.
We were there on a rainy spring day which suited us fine. Normally this town is crowded during ski season. We had it pretty much to ourselves.
I didn’t get Swiss fondue but I was tickled pink by the sausage dispenser on the side of the street. Sometimes the necessities need to be easily had, at any time of the day.
For those who visited or lived in DC back in the day, they will recall going down to Maine Avenue fish market to buy shrimp and seafood from the red roofed open air buildings sitting low down by the water. You could even get them pre-steamed with Old Bay Seasoning and ready to eat. The area was a bit run down and sketchy at night. It was a strange location in DC. But one went there for the shrimp. Or if you were eating at Philips.
Times have changed but the seafood stalls are still there. Other than that, it’s a complete make over. Now The Wharf is an entire outdoor boardwalk built for pleasure by the water. It is a new destination location in DC. If you come to DC, I recommend trying it out.
Go for the seafood, Gordon Ramsey’s sticky toffee pudding, and towers of seafood. If you are not into seafood, there are other options. Even the Irish pub is good!
Every country takes the food of their immigrants and makes it their own. In Italy, it’s “Italianized” and mild. In America, it is supersized. But, as the US is a country of many immigrants, the food melds and blends seamlessly across menus.
Half a banh mi sandwich.
Case in point, I recently went to Pho-Cue in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a hipster vibe-y place that could easily be in Oakland, California, or London, England. The staff have tattoos and shaved manbuns. The food is a mix of Vietnamese food, pan-Asian food, and American barbecue.
A pork belly steamed bun, bao, sandwich.
The barbecue was too strong for the pho soup but I like that they tried. The banh mi sandwiches were gigonormous.
Smothered fries topped with jalapenos.
The best thing were the pork belly “chips” — because why not take a fatty pork belly and deep fry it? It’s almost the American way.
Pork belly chips.
After living in Rome, it was nice to get both pho and barbecue of high caliber.
With those words, Augustus (as Octavian was known from 27 BCE) declared the Roman Empire’s conquest of Egypt. As I was considering the end of my Roman adventure, I felt like I needed to go to Egypt so see that important part of the Roman world. Although Rome is modern, it seems to live on as the Rome of 2,000 years ago. Back then, Alexandria was the Roman capital of Egypt. I hear that modern day Alexandria is a very mediterranean city. I did not go there. I went to Cairo.
Cairo reminded me a lot of Dhaka. But a scarier, more aggressive Dhaka. In Cairo, I could see how as a single woman, one would feel danger. I didn’t feel scared but I was also never alone. When my friend and I were in the souk, she wouldn’t let us go into the long narrow stalls because it was too dangerous. She made the vendors bring things out to the street for us to look at. Maybe I was more oblivious back then, but in Dhaka, I never felt that the men were too aggressive. They tended to want to take photos and stare but I was not too worried about getting mugged or molested. Maybe it’s my memory changing the reality or maybe I was more naive. I was also almost never alone in Dhaka.
The oldest coffee shop in Cairo, on the right, in the Khan el-Khalili souk.
The first day, my friend took me to the souk, the Khan el-Khalili market, as that was my wish. It was hot so that trip was fast. I got my postcards and we left. We ate lunch at a place in the souk. It is a very touristy place and my friend had to insist on some of the local dishes rather than the grilled meat platters being pushed on all the other tourists. I had the falafel which in Egypt is made with fava/broad bean rather than chickpea/garbanzo, and I had the baba ganoush, and the other dips. I liked the stretchy flat bread. There was always too much food and I could see that the Egyptians are extremely hospitable. The next day, we went to a cosmopolitan bakery in the Maadi and that was also nice. That neighborhood had the same dusty streets and dusty buildings of Dhaka.
The next day, the sun was out and the sky was a pale blue color. Sort of. Another Egyptian friend, Mohamed, a former colleague who had worked with me in Dhaka, and a colleague from that time picked me up with a driver for a day out. When my friend picked me up, he had to come in and have a bit of fruit and coffee. Hospitality is king. The day turned out to be like one of those days in Dhaka which went from 9 am to 11 pm. The driver was filled with facts and his English was good. I told him that he should be a guide. He said that he was! My friends had hired him for the day. We went to the Coptic Cairo (Old Cairo). On this street, there is a famous ruin from Roman occupation times, 2,000 years ago (30 BCE when Augustus conquered Egypt). The fort was built in Babylon and years later, the Hanging Church is built on top of the Roman fortress.
From the ring road.
Finally, I had to see the pyramids. They recommended the ring road. The pyramids looked quite nice from the distance and from an air conditioned car. I remarked so. At one point, the guide slowed down so that I could get the ultimate photo of a lush green field, a camel and donkey under two palm trees, and in the distance, the only remaining wonder of the ancient world, the pyramids. For breakfast, around noon, we went to a place that my Egyptian friend chose. It was a place where they make “Egyptian pizza” or “fatayer” which is thin layers of dough with filling. One was with honey and others were savory. We had one with mozzarella, bell peppers, and thin slices of dried meat. Then we had another with smoked sausage. All beef. This dish is my favorite Egyptian food so far. The dough is fried in clarified butter and the pastry takes on the sheen of golden stain glass windows. Yummy.
Fatayer, a “pizza” of a sort.
Later in the day, Mohamed asked if we were ready for dinner. My other friend recommended “Hagooga” a local place. Very local. So new and local that even Mohamed had never been. We went around 6 pm and it was not to busy but most of the 40 tables inside were filled with families and others. Only Egyptians. We sat indoors. This restaurant was so local that even the locals ignored us, the only foreigners.
“Whisky” water made from the salad dressing.
I got to try the famous “whisky” which is the salad dressing water from making the salad. We got the grilled meats, and other dips or “mezze” – not sure what it’s called in Egypt. I still preferred the breakfast pizza. At one point, Mohamed told me not to fill up on bread because we still had dessert. When were stepped outside, the courtyard was light with string lights and every table was filled with diners. There were twenty people waiting for tables. Another entertaining thing about Hagooga’s is that everything is branded with her smiling face and name. Even the brass lamps had her name stamped out.
Hagooga knows how to brand!
Most of the local women I saw in Cairo had their hair covered. I asked if this was law and although it is not, they cover their hair. It is windy, sunny, and dusty in Cairo, so I could see why it would make sense to keep one’s head covered. My friend also told me that most of them go and have their hair washed once per week, so maybe that is another reason.
El Rehab City mall.
For dessert, we went into Rehab City, a gated city. It was like entering Miami. We went to an outdoor mall/market and Mohamed got us platters of sweets. I recognized baklava but I don’t know the names of the others. I teased Mohamed that this, the eating of dessert, was the most serious I had seen him all day. The weather was quite pleasant at this point and I can see why the Egyptians are night people. I also saw a chicken shawarma that was at least 200 pounds. After the sweets, Mohamed said that it was time for gelato. We protested but then he mentioned that they have mastic/mistica. I had to try it. I first tried mistica 20 years ago in Greece. In Greece, the mistica, a white honey like textured resin from a mediterranean bush, is served on a teaspoon in a glass of water. One licks a bit of the mistica off and sips a bit of water, each sweetening the other. This gelato was not like that.
One of the gates of old Cairo.
Finally, the fun day out was over. Just like my tour of the ancient Roman empire, and Rome.
