Berlin

So yes, it was an awfully long time ago that we had our little visit to Berlin, but work has been incredibly busy, and I am now catching up on all my blogs! Even with my ridiculous OCD memory for food though, I am struggling to remembr the exact ingredients of the food we ate there.

I have a real fondness for German food, even when it is so unfashionable to like it. I like a bit of stodge, and am a big fan of sauerkraut. Unfortunately though during our little weekend away, we never found the opportunity to go and eat any wurst, it does somehow feel wrong, especially as I'd even researched where the best curry wurst supposedly is. But the food we did eat was consistently good.

I arrived in Berlin very late on a Friday night, and as much as we loved our hotel, their concierge was rather rubbish at recommending something that was still open at 10pm, especially as I'd insisted on eating German food. We also insisted that we wanted to walk there, so she pointed us to somewhere near Hackescher Markt.

We loved the walk there, taking in most of Berlin's sights in Mitte, but it was only when we were quite near the restaurant that we realised we were walking right through the red light district. It didn't make us feel particularly uncomfortable, but knowing us, we started to overanalyse their business model and started thinking of ways to improve their sales. For some reason, all the girls had almost exactly the same outfits, with the exception that some boots (all equally patented and shiny) were black, whereas some were pink. Maybe men are just not that fussy.

Anyway, we ended up at a place called Lutter & Wegner, which turned out to be a sort of chain restaurant serving extremely traditional German food. Definitely a lot of stodge and soured cream to be had here! I had a goulash with spatzle, and spatzle has become one of my new favourite foods:

I think we had also ordered some kind of wurst and they got our order wrong, which meant some black pudding with apple arrived instead. I really ought not to try my bad German on actual German people:

All in all, it was good, but not particularly exciting.

More exciting was Moses' recommendation of Monsieur Vuong, also in the Hackescher Markt area, which he had described as being like a Vietnamese Busaba in Berlin. We'd also read it in the New York Times, which meant we knew it would be rammed, and even when we arrived at 4pm for a very late lunch, the place was packed!

And to be honest, I'm not really sure what the fuss is about. I did love the decor, quite utilitarian yet chic at the same time, but the short menu was almost too short (probably 6 main dishes in all with 2 or 3 specials), especially as the things on the menu didn't really excite me exactly. There was no beef pho (not sure whether that is a good or bad sign), so we both went for the chicken pho:

It was fine for what it was, but the soup base was a bit weak, maybe I'm just a bit spoilt for Asian food in London. What I was more impressed with was their setup; they didn't appear to have a kitchen at the back, and did everything in a tiny area by the entrance (boiling the noodles, spooning on the broth etc.), which probably explains the tight menu.

Undoubtedly our most exciting dinner was at Schneeweiss in Friedrichshain, also mentioned in the NYT. It wasn't quite as chic as we had expected it to be, it was definitely very white, but also quite down to earth, including some quite amateurish snowflakes on the windows which quite endeared me to the place. The whole idea of the menu is modern Alpine food, and whilst it won't set the world on fire, it did feel right to eat it in what is supposedly the equivalent of the East End of Berlin.

Starters were a goats' cheese tart and a potato and carrot soup - both humble yet very well done:


My memory is failing me slightly on the mains. One of them was definitely red mullet, very light and fresh:

But the other one was another goulash (maybe?) with some pink stuff on the top.

We really liked the Friedrichshain area actually, with some quite interesting bars including one called the Big Lebowski that served (not particularly good) White Russians, and also a very self-consciously grubby place that played good 60's British music!

Berlin is one of those places I can go back to again and again. The first time I went was with a group of 20 raucous consultants and ended in Berghain, this time, it was a much calmer experience. If only I can go there once when it's not freezing cold! Anyway, here is probably the best memory of the weekend :)

Naples and Pompeii

I have returned from the little weekend trip to Naples not ever wanting to eat pizza in England ever again. Not that I eat pizza much anyway, but it has to be one of the most poorly imitated dishes of all time, just walk round Leicester Square and have a look at those rock solid abominations in cafe windows. On the other hand, I walked past a place called Rosso Pomodoro near the Ivy yesterday, which boasted authentic Napoli pizza, will have to give it a proper look.

So you may have guessed, Naples is famous for its pizza, but more on that in a second. Naples is also very famous amongst Italians for its sfoglitelle (yes, no idea how to pronounce it either), a multi-layered shell pastry filled with ricotta and orange zest:

They are very very crisp, but a little too rich for me to be honest. But if you want to try them, I discovered that my favoured Italian deli beginning with P also has them from time to time. We tried them at Caffe Gambrinus near the Piazza del Plebiscito, recommended to us by the lady in the tourist office, who we also saw coming in for her own espresso, so it must be good. Having read a bit more about it, turns out the place used to serve Oscar Wilde! We loved the atmosphere here, and returned once more for a final espresso just before we left for the airport. Even a non-coffee drinker like me was downing two espressos a day!

Right, pizza time. Apparently authentic pizzerias in Naples have a little sign on the door to say that they are the dogs's bollocks, although apart from using buffalo mozzarella, I'm not sure what the strict stipulations are. We went to Da Michele, so famous that our hostel host knew exactly where we were heading when we mentioned going to try pizza near the train station. It is certainly old skool, and only serves two types of pizzas: margheritas (tomato, mozzarella, basil, olive oil) and marinaras (tomato, oregano, garlic, olive oil, no cheese!):

This was the margherita:

And marinara (and yes, the more observant of you will notice knife marks in both pizzas, we were a little impatient...!):

OH MY GOD! So simple, so good! I think the secret is that their dough was very chewily elastic, very pleasantly so, very morish indeed. Apparently it helps you to digest it. We did eat some more pizza which was a bit more adorned later in the weekend, but once you've had the good stuff, you can never go back...

We did go to Naples for the food, but the main purpose of the trip was to go and see the ruins in Pompeii, and Naples really is an ugly city that you don't want to spend too much time in. As you can imagine, the strip next to the ruins in Pompeii is lined with tourist traps all serving pretty much the same thing, and we ended up trying a little chain restaurant Fratelli la Bufala, which specialised in all things buffalo:

Their buffalo mozzarella and chargrilled vegetables was actually very good, a nice change from the carb-overload of the rest of the trip. Incidentally, I bought back a whole kilo of mozzarella back, and am not sure what to do with it other than to make sexy salads. It's a bit too good to cook with I think, so suggestions please!

But our restaurant highlight of the weekend was during the night when we stayed in Pompeii. Most tourists go to the ruins as a day trip from Naples or Sorrento, so the hotel market is pretty underdeveloped. We stayed at a random B&B called Casa Villa Pompeii, run by Antonio and his lovely wife in the home where Antonio was born. Seriously, if you want to go to Pompeii, I have to give you the address of the place. They were the best hosts, ever. The house is a little bit out of the way of the main strip, so Antonio actually drove us to the restaurant of his friend so we wouldn't get ripped off staying on the tourist strip. And then his friend gave us a lift back!

Hang on!" I can hear you screaming. Surely he ripped us off by taking us to his mate's place, the most classic tourist trick in the book! And to be honest, the food wasn't the best, but the hospitality was so amazing. I think they were a bit shocked to see two little Asian girls being outgoing, and all the restaurant staff ended up wanting photos with us in the end. It was one of those really good nights when you're laughing non stop with the locals, even though you really can't understand each other.

Anyway, food! We actually had pasta in this place, and to be honest, all the pasta we had during this little trip was disappointing, maybe a testament that pasta is done quite well in London. This was their best pasta, ravioli stuffed with spinach:

We also had a very alcoholic rum baba (babas also famous in Naples area):

All washed down with a bottle of local red vino at only €6 each! One of the few restaurants I want to go back to, but not for the food.

Pompeii itself was tremendous. I had studied it a lot in high school during my three torturous years of learning Latin about Caecilius and his dog, but it was nothing like I imagined it to be. Thankfully, because we went during relatively low season, we were still able to get lost enough that no one else was around, and then you could get a real feeling of how it would have been like 2000 years ago. Here are a few photos (yes, I managed to somehow take 50 non-food photos on this trip, a record!).

Herculaneum, a small site near to Pompeii, where you can see Mount Vesuvius in the background:

Beautiful mosaic in Herculaneum:

Pompeii proper, we had amazing weather too, look at the sky!

Vineyards have been recreated to look like what it would have been, again, with Vesuvius in the background:

The oldest surviving amphitheatre in Italy:

Martin je t'aime

It has taken me a long time to blog about the wondrous, wondrous meal we had at Martin Berasategui in San Sebastian because I was waiting to get Eunice's wonderful photos of the place. It was probably the best meal I've ever eaten. Sorry mum.

We ended up here by accident I guess. Everyone who goes to San Sebastian tries to get a reservation at Arzak, probably the best known restaurant in the region, but even Peter's concierge service couldn't get us in. Never mind, there were plenty of other Michelin starred places, it's not as if they would be bad, right? I've never heard of Martin Berasatgui before, but he seems to be some kind of mini Basque celebrity; he also runs two of the restaurants in the Guggenheim, and his face endorses several food products we saw in Basque country a la Jamie Oliver.

The restaurant is tucked away in a suburb somewhere outside of the centre of San Sebastian - don't ask me where, Mr TomTom took us. But upon entering the place, you start to sense the magic. There are little stairs surrounded by lovely landscaped gardens leading to the front door. Inside the restaurant itself, I still can't decide whether I liked the decor or not. We decided it did feel as if we were part of a murder mystery evening: the furniture was just a little bit too ornate and too big. But the tables were wonderfully spaced, and it was really nice to see that the majority of the clientele were in big groups of 8+, just illustrates how differently the Basque people like to dine.

It was here that my little foodie crowd decided on a new criteria for marking restaurants: you start with a score of 100, and you take points away for things that niggle, annoy, or are just downright offensive. You can't add points, no matter how good the service is. I will say now that Martin ended up with 96. Of the four points deducted, I think three was for the super super scary maitre d'. It was obvious that he was the culprit of the murder mystery. It was almost like he was daring us to misbehave and not like something.

Like my review of the Fat Duck, I feel like there's no point in me trying to explain the dishes, and instead I will just present them here. What I will say is that Martin manages to deliver such delicious food without all the hocus-pokery that is so trendy with restaurants these days, food that is all about flavour, with amazing combinations. His signature dish of mille feuille of foie gras and smoked eel leapt straight into my top 5 dishes I've ever eaten, and the cooking was consistently good throughout. There was only one 'duff' dish, the warm vegetable hearts salad with seafood, with a jelly concoction which disturbed me somewhat.

As always, thanks Eunice for being able to steal your photos, as well as your format for the menu!

Lightly Smoked Cod with powder of hazelnuts, coffee and vanilla
Mille-Feuille of Smoked Eel, Foie Gras, Spring Onions and Green Apple
Peach Gazpacho with Cockles and txakoli
Squid Soup, creamy squid ink ravioli with squid crouton

Little Pearls of Fennel in raw, risotto and emulsion
Cheese and Carabana Oil Bubble with endives, red onion juice and Iberian bacon
Fam's Egg with beetroot and liquid herb's salad, carpaccio of basque stew and cheese
Warm Vegetable Hearts Salad with seafood, cream of lettuce hearts and idionised juice

Roast Red Mullet with crystals of soft scales and juice of white chocolate with seaweeds
Roasted Araiz Pigeon, fresh pasta with mushrooms and spring onions, touches of truffle cream

Warm and Cold of Apple and Roots
Coal Crumbs with frozen yoghurt and little acid touches of strawberries, lemon grass and passionfruit
As a Cold Soup, banana and vanilla stew, with citrics and ice cream

And if you're thinking that our scoring system is harsh, you'd be pleased to know that Martin had so many little touches that if he was allowed positive points, he would have easily knocked any competition out of the park. Tiny little things like little stools for your handbags, feminine products and toothbrushes (!) available in the toilet, the maitre d' noticing that we were pretty young and therefore not recommending any ridiculous wine... And the biggest plus point is that they take any food allergies/dislikes here very seriously, important given that Eugene claims (hee hee) he is lactose intolerant, and Eunice hates oysters whilst I hate bananas. The substitutes were often as innovative and creative as the 'normal' tasting menu.

The poor man came out to greet all the diners after the dinner, and I fear that our bad and slightly drunk French may mean that I now have a restraining order at the place. Martin je t'aime, oh yes.

San Sebastian food coma

In some ways, I shouldn't write this post, because it will encourage people to go to San Sebastian, and I'm not sure I want to necessarily do that. Being the city with the highest per capita Michelin stars in the world (what a good KPI that is!), it is a foodie magnet, but it is a surprisingly untouristy place, and let's hope it stays that way.

Our favourite person on the trip was undoubtedly Miguel, the owner of the small city centre Pension Amalur. Despite the fact that he spoke about 3 words of English, and we relied on the bad Spanish I learnt in South America, his hospitality shone through, and we all wanted to give him a cuddle at the end. We were a bit suspicious when he recommended we go to a hamburger joint round the corner from the pension, as we had arrived around 11pm, but it turned out to be foodie enough to warrant some photos.

We never did note down the name of the place, but it is just off Calle de San Martin in the Old Town. You may also recognise it from the slightly aggressive looking waitress who looked like she would kill you at any moment. No fries, no sides, but you can order more or less anything with your perfectly cooked medium burger. Mine was with mushroom and scrambled egg, a combination which should be in burger joints the world over:

San Sebastian itself is only a tiny little place, we more or less walked around the entire place in a day. The food market we visited at Mercado de la Bretxa was not quite as impressive as the ones we visited in Barcelona, but I really wouldn't complain if I had it on my doorstep:

But getting down to business, one of the primary reasons people go to the Basque Country is to sample their pintxos, the Basque version of tapas. There are literally rows and rows of little pintxos bars all around the Old Town, the tradition being that you have a pintxo and a beer at one, and move on. Now that's what I call a bar crawl! We had much trouble controlling Eugene's enormous appetite, we would always say we will try 1 or 2 between us at each bar, but end up with multiple plate fulls. Honestly I think this was the first time I was literally overwhelmed by food, and I am normally proud of my very unfemale appetite:

By far the best pintxo bar we found was La Fuego Negro right next to the big church in the Old Town. Immediately from the decor you could see it was a trendier version of the traditional bar, with colanders used as lampshades and blackboards and chalk for you to graffiti in the bathrooms. Two other things also set it apart: the pintxos were very inventive, including combinations such as almond coffee with sweetbread fritters and pork with vanilla foam, but most importantly, everything was made to order, a vast change from most pintxos bars which had food sitting there for hours on end. We visited this place 3 times in the space of 24 hours, I think the waiters were starting to get worried that we would never leave:

You can't unfortunately fly direct into San Sebastian, which probably explains the low tourist numbers. Like most people, we flew into Bilbao and did the hour's drive, and we found that Bilbao seems to have given up on food, probably because of its close neighbour's sophisicated offering. We walked endlessly around to find any sort of interesting eatery still open, but we somehow ended our foodie trip in a branch of KFC. Yes, we felt thoroughly dirty afterwards. Thank goodness for the Guggenheim then, which was the only saving grace in our short time in Bilbao.

And yes, you may have noticed that I discovered Picasa in this post. Good way to disguise the photos taken in poorer light!

Indonesian in Amsterdam

It took me ages to post the follow up to Amsterdam (long story to be explained in next post), but here it is!

I suspect that Eugene's main motivation for organising the Amsterdam trip was to get Indonesian food rather than all the exciting things the city has to offer. Eugene is from Singapore, and has been spoilt throughout his upbringing in terms of food, and unfortunately the Singaporean/Malaysian/Indonesian food in London just simply sucks. I'm no connoiseur to be honest, I've never actually been in that part of the world, but I started to see what he meant.

The place that every guide book seemed to point us to was the very un-Indonesian sounding Kantjil & De Tijger, which is on Spuistraat (pronounced 'spau-straat'), a street which we kept finding ourselves at quite near the studenty city centre district. It looks completely un-Indonesian outside too, but step inside and you suddenly are hit with some wonderful smells.

The menu itself is a bit mad, mainly because if you don't speak any Indo, you spend most of the time trying to decipher what things are, especially as most dishes comprises of 4 or 5 different things, none of them written in English or Dutch! Anyway, I plumped for a nasi goreng Kantjil, which I guess translates to their house special fried rice (hee hee):

It was blooming enormous! Several of us ordered this dish, most of us struggled to eat half of it, Eugene unsurprisingly scoffed all of his down. I was a bit put off by the very greasy looking home-made crisps, but I really like that coconutty-powdery stuff they serve with everything.

Still, it wasn't quite as enormous as what Fil and Emily plumped for, which was some sort of set menu which probably would've fed all 7 of us:

All very comforting, but I must say I'm not that bowled over by it. I guess this is the kind of thing people grow up with and it becomes their comfort food for choice, just like how lots of people don't understand the random cravings I have whenever I'm in Hong Kong.

I shall end on one non-foodie tip. On our first day, we did a free walking tour of the city hosted by New Europe Tours (their website here). They run these free tours all over Europe, and are generally done by enthusiastic studenty types who live on tips. The guide we had probably made up half the stuff he told us (this American kid who had a big big chip on his shoulder about his religious parents), but it was all very entertaining and a lovely way to orient yourself around the city. I'm thinking of going on one of the London ones this summer, it might be fun just to see.

Gaining weight in Amsterdam

Amsterdam was a very refreshing change from the US West Coast. It really should go under some fancy marketing campaign, because it really doesn't need the headline drugs and red light district to really get any tourists. It's such a chilled city, small enough to walk around, with enough interesting stuff to go and do, and most of all, people seem so blooming happy there!

The Dutch aren't exactly known for their food, but this time I went with some immense foodies. Eugene is probably the most foodie person I know, but Emily and Emma who also came are big foodies too, and Fil claims to be 'quiet foodie', whatever that is. Probably means Eugene and I talk too much about food as it is :)

There were 3 things we definitely wanted to try - first was Indonesian food, which will be in the next post, but also the more fattening Dutch pancakes and Dutch chips. The first time I had Dutch pancakes was when my friend Kaying took me to this tiny pancake place in Amsterdam run by this charming gay guy, who proceeded to stuff us with as much batter as possible. I couldn't find the place again, but I think pancakes are much of a muchness. We went to a place just off Damm, where I had the almost compulsory combination of ham, cheese, and mushroom:

They should rename this 'how much processed food can you fit on a plate' - still good though! Eugene had even more worrying bacon and eggs combo, which was literally half an English breakfast plonked onto a pancake. Look how happy he is!:

It was during this meal that it finally dawned on me what the HP in HP sauce stood for! Go and find your bottle and have a look at the label if you don't. I just wiki'ed it and the entry claims the poor man who invented brown sauce only got paid £150 for the HP brand, whereas Heinz bought the brand for £440M in 2006. Do people actually eat the stuff outside the UK? My preferred accompaniment to brown sauce, by the way, is one of Alan Wellington's steak sandwiches on the Southwark Habitat site, something I haven't eaten for a long time :(

It also dawned on me that as we were looking for Dutch chips, we may have got the Netherlands muddled up with Belgium. We did actually spend half a day looking for fresh waffles to eat before remembering that we were not in Belgium. But we did stumble across some finally just off the main shopping street. The smell and the queue told us it must be good:

Apparently this little shop started off making the sauces for chips, and branched out to also make chips. Even today, you have a choice of over 20 sauces to choose from, from the traditional Dutch mayonnaise to Belgian mayonnaise, curry sauce, chilli sauce, satay sauce etc. etc. But it was the chips that were the star - really really crisp on the outside, to the extent you think they've battered them, and really soft in the middle. We had them smothered in Dutch mayo (very creamy, but not as pungent as Belgian mayo), curry sauce, and another gloopy pink sauce that I can't quite remember. Once again, Eugene is looking very happy:

Thank goodness we walked a lot on this trip! Not that you really see fat people in Amsterdam - must be all that cycling and running over of tourists.

Lunch by the beach

It was my lovely partner at work, Alan, who first introduced me to the wonders of seafood in Barcelona, and it was also him that recommended going to Can Majo in Barceloneta. As it turns out, it is one of the most popular places in Barcelona to eat seafood, and we soon found out why. It is literally on the beach, with lots of lovely seating outside. But given we are from Hong Kong, we were very happy with our table inside, out of the sun :p

The inside decor is really very simple, and we had a table right by the kitchen. Some would argue this is probably the worst place to sit in a restaurant, but we loved seeing stuff being ferried in and out. There is also an awesome fridge just outside displaying all their treasures:

One thing I really loved was that they were happy to serve everything 'family-style', which is what we're used to in our culture. For starters, we had some octopus Galician style (scoffed too quickly for a photo), and fried small fish (also scoffed, but just enough time to take a teeny photo) - both excellent. The potatoes with the octopus was probably the highlight of that dish, impossibly smooth and waxy, and the fish so sweet and fresh. We also shared a huge shellfish platter, which was really quite bargainous at €36 given that there was copious amounts of langoustines and lobster:

Perhaps the most exciting thing in the platter was their 'spiny sea snails', which were very reminiscent of the 東風螺 we had when we were all kids. Very sweet, and very pretty:

Can Majo is also very famous for its rice, and even though paella is a southern Spanish dish, almost every table seemed to be eating it. Personally I found it a little too rich actually, maybe because the other two dishes were also 'tomatoey':

We also tried some fideua, which is a Catalonian version of paella, made with short vermicelli rather than rice. This I found to be much much better than the paella, they somehow manage to keep the pasta very al dente, and I loved the texture. I've already eaten lunch, but this has gotten me all hungry again:

We also had a rice casserole with lobster, a more brothy affair. I loved how they managed to very fairly split the lobster between our 6 plates, especially as I got some lobster brains - mwahahaha!

Amazingly, the bill came to just over €200 for lunch for 6 people (inc. a very delish bottle of Gewurtztraminer and 2 desserts), very good value given the quality and amount of seafood that we had. Definitely some of the best seafood I've had in Europe, when's the next trip back?

Mercat de Sant Antoni

Although we stayed within a 15 minute walk of Mercat de la Boqueria, we discovered we were actually staying a stone's throw away from Mercat de Sant Antoni, a much more local, but no less amazing food market near Sant Antoni metro station. As well as being close, there were none of the annoying photographers as in Boqueria who just snap and don't buy anything and hence annoy all the shopkeepers.

I really started thinking about buying a holiday home in Sant Antoni whilst walking around this market - how amazing would it be to have it as your local! The shopkeepers were absolutely adorable here. Most don't speak a word of English, and my Spanish is atrocious, yet you can tell they really respect their food, as well as knowing tons about it. They take so much care with each customer, it's simply a pleasure to shop here. For example, I asked to buy some avocados at one stall, and the woman refused to sell it to me because she said they were passed their best - you'd never get that in London.

Again, it was the variety of seafood that really caught our eye. Just look at the variety of stuff you can get - so many different types of prawns, huge hunks of tuna, dover sole, 白飯魚...:

Gorgeous looking red mullet:

So many types of clams, we were confused at what to buy. We ended up with some Berberecho (middle left hand bucket) in the end. The attention the woman paid to them was amazing - she repeatedly tapped them to seek out the empty ones, and threw any away that she wasn't happy with. We ended up putting them into a hotpot, the soup was impossibly sweet.

Even more exciting (how can you get more excited Connie?!) was the discovery of 賴尿蝦, mantis shrimp which is affectionately known as 'pissing themselves prawns' in Cantonese:

These are an absolute childhood favourite, I have such fond memories of gnawing at their impossibly sweet meat. However, they have become quite rare even in Hong Kong, especially the small native ones that we used to eat. You can still get mahoosive ones that are normally fried with garlic in the big seafood centres in Hong Kong, but they are just not the same.

But the ones in Barcelona were more like what I have in my memories. They are a complete bugger to get into - very sharp shells with lots of little hooks to get into your fingers - but they are so worth the effort. We very quickly boiled them, and they retain all their gorgeously sweet flavour. Such a shame we only ate these once.

The most disappointing though were the crayfish which we experimented with:

They look fab, don't they, but their meat was very disappointing - soft and withered. We wondered whether they had died in transit, and had started emitting enzymes which met their deterioriated really quickly.

A note on these markets though, and probably a note on Spanish shopping in general. These places stayed open really late during the weekend, until about 8pm, but there is the siesta time, anything from 12 to 4pm, when nothing is opened. Markets do not open on Sundays, and even on Mondays, they are very quiet, with the seafood sections completely dead. I suspect it is because everyone's too busy at church to go and fish on Sundays - we'll know that we should make it a weekday visit next time.