Oops! The floating market was closed, but that didn’t stop us from finding an amazing lunch of spicy noodle soup!
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Tag Archives: Food
Japan the Gastric Paradise
The title says it all, Japan is a food paradise. It’s home to some of the freshest fish and tastiest seafood I’ve ever had. The Japanese strive for perfection in their dining. It’s not uncommon to find a restaurant in Japan that serves only a single dish. Barbecued eel, gyoza, soba, tea, sushi, the list is nearly endless. When striving for the perfect meal they consider everything, I mean everything, the metal that is used to make the knife that cuts the ingredients, the shape of tea pot, the type of coal the meat is grilled over, not to mention the freshness and quality of the ingredients. It’s apparent the moment you walk into a market or past a produce vendor, these veggies are gorgeous, seasonal, and as close to perfect as you will ever see. The beef is exceptionally marbled, the eggs have deep orange yolks, the grapes are enormous, plump, and sweet. These ingredients in the hands of a caring Japanese chef made for some of the most exceptional meals of my life. Rather then continue to gush about the food i’ll cut to the chase and show you the photos.
I’d like to introduce you to the worlds greatest store bought milk.
Our last takoyaki in Osaka 🙁
Yakisoba in Dontonbori Osaka
Yamoyaki, sweet potato yaki. yummy!
Leek okonomiyaki, crisy and crunchy.
The grand daddy of yaki, okonomiyaki!
Our last attempt at kuidore.
A force to be reckoned with, tea, tea, milk, coffee, on a bullet train.
Train food fail..
Takoyaki smile
Food – Ciya Sofrasi in Istanbul
We were invited to a restaurant on the Asian side of Istanbul by some friends we meant in Capadocia, Emily and Neil. It had great trip advisor reviews, and made the top 200 restaurants in Europe list by a travel site that I can’t remember right now. The restaurants name is Ciya but its pronounced chiya.
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A bit confusing at first, but after our waiters explained the process it all made sense. First, you go to what Americans think of as a salad bar. This self service bar had all sorts of interesting spreads, dips and cold items. This is payed for by weight, Berkley beat everyone’s weight. Her plate cost 21 tl or about 12 dollars. Our eyes were a bit too big, we loaded our plates up, leaving very little room for the hot food that follows the salad bar. But that didn’t stop us from ordering a wide variety of dishes. The food was good, but the fun of meeting fellow Americans who share our love of travel was refreshing.
Turkish restaurant on the Asian side of istanbul
21 tl worth of Turkish Salads
Crispy chicken skin stuffed with rice and nuts, very good!
Berkley got to hold a baby bunny, also gets her fortune read after our meal was over.
Our first meal in Greece
What an amazing first meal. Sloane has become a pro at using a website called couchsurfing, it’s basically a site for travelers who want to open their home to each other and show off their city. We were treated to a late lunch/early dinner by Yannis, the incredibly generous man who was hosting us in Athens. Being sunday afternoon, his first few choices were closed. But 4th times a charm, and charming it was. I was only able to get a few quick shots of the meal but it was a great introduction to Greek food. We had Greek salad, they make it almost how you would expect plus green bell peppers. A fish egg paste called Taramosalata that was amazing. It’s best described as a cross between creamy hummus and the garlic sauce they serve at Zankou Chicken in Los Angeles, not fishy at all. I even think my younger sister Emily could have enjoyed this stuff. A few grilled shrimp, some whole fresh fish, some meatballs, some fried cheese, and a plate or two of french fries.
Milan Italy Meatballs
I haven’t been posting much lately because the food in Croatia was uninspired, for the past week and half we have had the exact same menu to order from.
3 soups, beef, tomato and mushroom.
4 salads, cabbage, tomato, seasonal (lettuce) or mixed, and mixed is literally cabbage, lettuce and tomato.
a few spaghetti options that would probably include tomato sauce and carbonara.
1 or 2 Risotto’s
Some exceptionally expensive fish and meat options.
And Bread (which all restaurants charge for even if you don’t ask for it).
We have left Croatia on our 3 day trek to get to Milos, a small greek island and I’ve become inspired to write about the food we have been eating again. This meal was found near the Duomo in Milan, we were wandering around the small streets surrounding this church and happened in a restaurant named Cimmino Fresco. Where I ate one of the best meatballs of my life. Sloane and I both ordered the meatballs and Berkley ordered veal milanese. The rest of the meal was nothing exceptional but these meatballs were fluffy, had a nice crispy parts on the outside, and had whole roasted pine nuts sprinkled throughout. It’s good to be out of Croatia and have a lot more variety on the menu.
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Food – Pizza in Croatia
Recommended to us by our new friend and guide Marina, Pizza Italiana da Sergio, in Rovinj Croatia, has been our favorite meal and by far the best pizza we have had. They have a salad with what they call vrhnje, which in Croatian just means sour cream, this stuff is amazing. This inspired us to go there two nights in a row for dinner.
Hostel Swap
Hostel Swap. It’s kinda like Wife swap, but less entertaining. We packed up all of our things and headed toward the islands of Venice. We were off to find a lady with sardines. What I mean by that, is we had to make it to a meeting point by 10am to find Mrs. Di Cicco, our cooking class instructor. This sounds simple, right? You plan enough time to get from point A (our hostel on the mainland) to point B (an obscure vaporetto stop). And, it would be simple if we had a map that included all of Venice’s windy streets, or if all of the windy streets were labeled with names. Honestly, I don’t think all of the ‘streets’ have names. So, what you do is you look at the map, walk in the general direction you think you are supposed to go, then ask someone who looks like a local where this point B is, then turn around because you’ve been going the wrong way. Eventually we seem to get to all the places we need. If it weren’t so darn hot, or if we weren’t carrying all of our possessions, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. My strategy with directions, so far, is to take off my sunglasses, place a semi-vapid look upon my face, and walk up to an Italian man while butchering their romantic language, pointing to a dot on a map. Then I smile real big, with a bit of confusion in my eyebrows. This seems to be working relatively well, met with smiles, laughs and very helpful directions.
We made it to our destination with 5 minutes to spare, and met Mrs. Di Cicco. She led us through the labyrinth to her apartment on the top floor of a building. It was a beautiful space with air conditioning and a serene balcony view. Sadly the weather didn’t permit lunch on the terrace. With the guidance of Mrs. Di Cicco, and Seth’s expertise, we created a delectable meal of Sarde di Saor (marinated sardines in an onion, pine nut, and raisin mix), zucchini and prawn risotto, baked sea bass in tomatoes, olives, and capers, and Zabaglione (a marsala wine custard). It was all so delicious. I really, really liked the sardines. I was impressed that Sloane liked them too. She even had seconds! The risotto was cooked in an amazing broth that we made with the prawn heads and a variation of a mir poux. I could have sipped that from a cup, it was so good. The dessert was surprisingly good. I don’t normally like custards, or custard-like consistencies (aka Jell-O [which is the devil so don’t even go there]), but this was so good. She said it could be served warm, but due to the heat we popped them into the fridge, so they were cold when we ate them. We dunked thin, little Venetian cookies into the cream and it was oh so good.
After lunch we promptly hauled our junk over towards the hostel. It wasn’t far at all, and if my memory serves me correctly, we didn’t ask for directions. Well, maybe we did. There definitely wasn’t a street name. We had to go to the ‘alley’ behind the street name. We had a bit of trouble with the guy who checked us in because he didn’t want to allow us to only stay one night. And the rules surrounding this situation were quite ridiculous, but we decided to wait until the morning when we could speak with the manager.
After doing some planning and relaxing in the AC, we made our way to Vaporetto 1. Ok, a little info about Venice for those of you who don’t know. Before I came to Venice the first time, I was unaware that it was a series of islands. In the city center there are no cars. It’s a walking city. I don’t even think I saw bikes. This is because to get to places you want to go you usually have to cross several bridges, and many of the streets are barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. But, there is a lot of water. The canals are the lifeblood of Venice. So, any and all transportation happens upon them. Mail, police, deliveries, you name it, it happens on the water. A vaporetto is public transportation, or Venice’s version of a bus or subway. Something to know about the vaporettos, and public transportation in general in Venice (and perhaps Italy), is that they hardly check for tickets. At our bus stop on the mainland there wasn’t a place to buy a ticket, and when we asked the driver he waved us along. Silly us, we got on Vaporetto 1 and asked the boat guy where we could buy a ticket. So we paid 7 euro each. As we were on the little boat we watched the hoards of people waltz onto the boat without mention of tickets or the like. Gah! Oh well. Anyhow, Vaporetto 1 makes its way down the Grand Canal and you get to see Venice how it’s meant to be seen. I finally was able to see some of the magic of Venice. Getting lost in the stale, humid heat while trekking through the maze of streets is not a pleasurable experience, while losing yourself with the wind blowing through your hair making your way down the Grand Canal with the magnificent architecture of the old masters passing by can leave a lasting impression.
Finding our way back to our stop at the Rialto Fish Market, we set off in search of dinner. We found a spot that looked decent and didn’t try to steal too much of our money. We then traipsed back to our hostel, only a few turns away, and settled in for the evening.
This morning we abandoned our hostel on time, as the manager begrudgingly agreed to not charge us for an extra night. It was still cool when we left the hostel. Wait, wait. Cool is the wrong word. Maybe I should say that it was cooler than painfully hot. So, maybe we didn’t start sweating until we walked a few yards. That’s a more accurate description of the weather. Anyhow, we left in search for the docks to buy tickets to Croatia. We found the docks, left our big bags at the station, and caught a Vaporetto to the island of Murano. Murano is known for it’s blown glass. I was hoping to find a hands on class to take while in Venice, but that was not in our cards for the day. We had about three hours until we had to get back to the station.
Remember my schtick about public transportation and not really having to pay the fare? Well, I’m going to have to say that that rule does not apply when taking a vaporetto to a super touristy island. We took a few vaporettos without purchasing tickets, but on this boat they checked. There went another 7 euros each! I bet they never actually fine you for not paying for a ticket (it’s 57 euros if they do), that they just make you buy a ticket.
As we exited the boat someone was kindly there to tell us that there was a glass blowing demonstration, free of charge, all the way down the path to the left. We watched the demonstration, which was just a lure to get us to shop, then we shopped. LOL But I think glass blowing is really cool, so I thought the demonstration, no matter how mundane they made it, was interesting to me. One day I will take a course. Anyhow, it was neat to walk through the shops and see all the glass. We wanted to buy a really interesting Christmas ornament, but didn’t want to babysit a glass orb through Africa.
After finding a cheap lunch (which included the best pizza we had in Venice) we returned to the docks, bought our ferry tickets to Rovinj and we are on our way. We don’t have a place to stay for the night, but Sloane has a friend in Rovinj who is, supposedly, finding us a place to stay. I hope this works. Either way, we are pretty excited for Croatia. We’re hoping it includes relaxation, beaches, outdoor activities, good food, and a stronger dollar
Food – Helado
Barcelona, 89+ degrees at night. Not much can take the edge off of that sort of humidity and heat. But after wandering around for hours looking for a specific ice cream place Berkley found in the Barcelona city guide, we stopped into a random gelateria that looked like it was homemade. The ice cream was decent, but the fact that it was ice cold was AMAZING. We are getting better and better at finding inventive and novel was of cooling off, ducking into a cellphone store (they seem to have to coldest stores), eating ice cream, and asking for cups of ice at a restaurant just to name a few.
Food – Spanish Tortilla
It’s our last night in Madrid, and we convinced our good friend Alberto to teach us how to make an authentic spanish tortilla. Tortilla is a traditional Spanish tapa made with egg and potato. Other ingredients such as onion, chorizo, spinach, pretty much anything you want can also be added into the mix. At first it was intimidating but after watching Alberto make the first one with onions and potatoes, I quickly and easily whipped together the second one(with chorizo and onion). His came out perfectly but mine needed a bit more salt. Both were delicious, we ate them with him and his roommates at the traditional spanish dinner time 11:30 pm. The tortillas were accompanied by other traditional Spanish tapas like, jamón iberico (ham), cheeses (gouda and sheep’s milk manchego semicurado), and olives. It was a wonderful last meal to eat in Madrid.
Food – That aint’ no ordinary bagel
The line to my wife, Berkley, when she said she wanted to get bagels this morning was, “a bagel is just a bagel lets get something interesting instead”. Needless to say I’m officially a convert. We went to Tal Bagel on 1st ave near 55th St in Manhattan. I ordered the Salt Bagel with scallion cream cheese and lox, with an iced coffee to help with the 100 degree heat. The outside of the bagel was crisp and the inside was pillowy but had a really toothsome bite. The salt on the top in retrospect was a little to salty, but at the time I was loving every bite. I’d go back to New York just to get another one of these.
