Posts Tagged ‘food’
The noodle maker
La Mien noodles are the signature dish at Phnom Penh’s Noodle House. The chef makes them from scratch every time someone orders this dish.
Even though it’s great fun to watch how these noodles are made, the dish itself tastes a little bland. It clearly needs some more spices or sauce.
What I recommend instead are the vegetarian Dim Sum at $ 2.50 and the Red Peanut Curry at $ 3.50 at Noodle House. Both of these are excellent.
Marry in Macau – but bring your own food
Most travel books and travel websites describe Macau as a gourmet’s paradise.
After having been here for a week, I can’t really agree.
And I suspect that all those rave review about the great Portuguese and Chinese food you can find in Macau must somehow have been masterminded by the Macau board of tourism.
Where’s the beef?
For the first couple of days in Macau, we had a hard time even finding restaurants.
In other cities, you come across dozens of decent eateries just by exploring any downtown street.
In Beijing or Shanghai, for instance, locals and tourists love to go out to eat. There are amazing restaurants everywhere. I kind of expected the same from Macau.
But in Macau’s downtown streets, all you see is some neon-lit snack bars or very basic eateries. And these places tend to offer low quality at a high price.
We felt disappointed or even ripped off almost every night.
I guess there must be great restaurants in some of the big hotels – but you’d probably have to win big at the local casinos before you could afford to have dinner there every night.
After our fourth or fifth disappointing dinner here, we finally found some reasonable places in the area behind Avenida Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.
There are Indian, Lebanese, Italian paces that offer pretty good food at moderate prices (I highly recommend the food at “Taste of India“, although the service may be a bit slow there sometimes).
Less restaurants, more wedding outfitters than elsewhere
Macau may have less downtown restaurants, but it definitely has more wedding outfitters than any city I’ve been to recently.
On some commercial streets, the competition is so tight that you wonder how they can all survive.
The wedding dresses and tuxedos displayed in the shop windows are probably best described with words like interesting, daring, different or colorful.
It seems to me that some of those Macau fashion designers have seen too many pictures of Louis XIV and the fashions at the French court of the 17th century.
Their gowns are an extravaganza of frills and rhinestones. The colors range from purple to canary-yellow to turquoise.
Of course they also have white wedding dresses – these are probably the most popular.
At least white dresses are all you see when you see couples at the picturesque places of Macau, posing for the pictures that will make up their wedding albums.
But the wedding outfitters hardly ever dress their store dummies in those elegant white outfits.
They mostly put the other colors and designs on display.
I guess they hope to encourage prospective couples to go for those more colorful version of their Louis XXXII creations.
Here’s to purple, yellow and flamingo-colored brides.
And good luck at trying to find a restaurant for the wedding party in Macau…
Life is good for animals in Bhutan
Meat shop in Thimphu, Bhutan
Most Bhutanese are devout Buddhists. And one of the cornerstones of Buddhism is that it’s wrong to kill animals because they are part of the divine creation.
Unfortunately, most Bhutanese also like eating meat. And that opens up a dilemma: if you want to eat meat, you have to slaughter animals.
But what can you do as a Bhutanese, if you like traditional meat dishes like phak sha laphu (stewed pork with radishes) or no sha huentseu (beef with spinach)?
strips of meat hanging out to dry
The solution these clever Buddhists have come up with is simple – even though it might not be 100 % in line with what Buddha wanted: they have “outsourced” the slaughtering of animals to India.
Every piece of meat you eat in Bhutan was slaughtered across the border and then imported.
Animals in Bhutan lead a good life
Cows in Bhutan wander the streets like in neighboring India, and no one gets mad at them for blocking the road. It’s taken for granted. They have a right to be there.
Offerings to the gods become a meal for the pigeons
Cattle is only there to help pull the plough across the rice paddies or to get milk.
Chickens are only kept to get eggs.
In the country’s many Buddhist monasteries, the monks and nuns leave offerings of rice, which pigeons and other birds will happily feed on.
And no true Buddhist would swat a fly or a mosquito – it’s better for your karma to shoo it away than to kill it.
Thimphu’s dog dilemma
In Bhutan’s capital Thimphu, the roaming dogs caused problems for tourism in recent years: the dogs would sleep all day and bark all night. That didn’t seem to bother the Bhutanese, but the tourists complained because they couldn’t get any sleep.
Of course, the Thimphu city council couldn’t just call a dog catcher and kill the stray dogs.
Instead, the city had an animal shelter built high up in the hills above the city,
Every once in a while, the dog catcher now drives around the streets of Thimphu, collects stray dogs and brings them to the compound in the mountains.
And there, the dogs can live happily ever after.
Unless they choose to dig a tunnel under the fence and make their way back to the streets of the capital. But then, the endless Buddhist circle of life would just begin anew…
The hidden restaurants of Thimphu
There are a lot of good restaurants in Bhutan’s capital Thimphu.
For non-locals, the question is just how to find them.
At home in Europe, I’m used to most restaurants being on the ground floor, usually with an illuminated sign and a welcoming doorway.
They’re easy to find, vying for my attention (and my money, of course).
Not so in Bhutan.
In Thimphu, you’d starve to death if you expected to just stumble upon a restaurant on the downtown streets.
Can you spot the restaurant sign?
Eating places here don’t have neon signs, billboards, or anything else to grab the attention of the hungry.
Restaurants are usually well-hidden on the first floors of the city’s shopping complexes. Tucked away between stalls selling cheap Chinese imported goods, internet cafes and tailor shops.
To find a restaurant, you usually have to climb up dirty, uninviting stairs. The smell and appearance of these staircases can hardly be considered the “amuse geule” of an enjoyable dining experience. On the contrary.
But once you’ve managed to locate the restaurant in the dimly lit hallways (God forbid there’d be a sign or an arrow pointing the way), you’re often in for a pleasant surprise.
The atmosphere can be really nice, the prices are generally low (you can get a full lunch menu for as little as a Euro) and the food is usually pretty interesting.
Ema datse, for instance. Chillies with cheese sauce.
Chillies are considered a vegetable in Bhutan, not a way to spice up some other dish. They’re hot, but if you like spicy food, ema datse is actually pretty tasty.
Other national specialties include shamu datse – mushrooms sautéed with cheese –, or kewa datse – potatoes with cheese sauce.
And those who don’t like cheese might enjoy Bhutanese red rice, a kind of locally grown rice that tastes a little nuttier than plain white rice.
Unfortunately, you’ll only find such good food if you know where to look for the restaurants in Thimphu – and if you don’t let unappealing stairways put you off.
German is good in Ulan Bator
Believe it or not, but you can see a lot of German influence in Mongolia’s capital Ulan Bator.
Everywhere you go, you’ll come across advertisements for Khan Bräu, for instance. The Khan Bräu brewery has been around since 1996. It’s run jointly by a German and a Mongolian.
Khan Bräu makes its beers in Mongolia, but they’re brewed in strict compliance with the German beer purity law. This law dates back to the year 1516 and dictates that beer should only be made from water, hops and malt.
Consequently, Khan Bräu imports its hops from Bavaria to give its beers that special German flavour.
Brauhaus and Biergarten
But Khan Bräu doesn’t only make beers. It’s taken the German idea of Gemütlichkeit even further: Khan Bräu also runs a “Biergarten” restaurant in Ulan Bator. Here, they serve their Pilsener and dark beers and also classic German food specialties like Leberkäse and Bratwurst.
If you don’t have the time to sit down in the Khan Bräu beer garden for a hearty German meal, how about some fast food? You can stay with the German theme even if you just want some junk food: there are at least three fast food joints called Berlin Burger in Ulan Bator.
German meat products seem to have a pretty good reputation in Mongolia. In downtown Ulan Bator, you’ll see German-language billboards for the Makhimpex meat processing factory.
The text on these billboards reads: “Europäische Qualität, Geschmack und Verpackung in der Mongolei”.
The German may be a little rough, but what this friendly butcher is trying to tell his Mongolian clientel is that he’s providing European quality and taste, but that his products are made in Mongolia.
They need a little help with their advertising
According to the Makhimpex website, the company slaughters and processes sheep, cows and horses. It also tells us that its daily production includes:
- 4 tonnes of blood
- 1 tonne of meat and bone meal
- 8 tonnes of blood meal
- 10 tonnes of food oil
Reading this, I’m glad once again that I’m a vegetarian.
Tune in to German radio
Maybe the Makhimpex meat processing company should try advertising on Ulan Bator’s German radio station? Yes, German radio also exists in the Mongolian capital.
Deutsches Radio Ulan Bator (DRUB) broadcasts three hours a week to the capital area in German. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from five to six p.m. it’s the German hour on FM 98.9 in Ulan Bator.
Three Mongolian journalists put the programs together – with a little help from Germany’s foreign broadcaster Deutsche Welle. The three have been on the air since March, 2008, and hope to reach a sizeable amount of the German-speaking crowd in Ulan Bator.
So far, they haven’t gotten much feedback from listeners, though. They want to improve their programs, however, and are willing to learn.
The Leipzig connection
One reason why German products and the German language play a role in Mongolia is that many Mongolians have personal ties to Germany.
Before the 1990’s, Mongolia was a staunch ally of the Soviet Union and had excellent connections to the other Eastern Block countries. One of these countries was communist East Germany.
Consequently, many Mongolians who wanted to study abroad went to the German Democratic Republic.
And while they were studying in Leipzig, Dresden or East Berlin, they also developed a taste for German beer, German food and German Gemütlichkeit.
It’s estimated that some 30 000 Mongolians have been educated in Germany over the last half century. 30 000 may not sound like a lot – but if you keep in mind that Mongolia only has a population of less than three million, you realize that this “Leipzig connection” must be a pretty strong force in Mongolian society.
Most of the 30 000 Mongolians who studied at German universities now hold important positions in this country. They’re a powerful group in Mongolian society and most of them are pretty wealthy for Mongolian standards.
At least they make enough money to be able to afford German beer, Bratwurst and all the other things they grew to love while they were in Germany.
Sorry, we’re out of dog meat
July 12 -13, 2008 edition of China Daily
There will be no dog meat in Beijing restaurants during the Olympics.
According to this weekend’s edition of China Daily (the country’s English language newspaper), the city’s 112 officially designated Olympic restaurants have been banned from selling dog meat during the Olympics.
The paper continues that non-designated restaurants have also been encouraged not to serve the meat.
“Dog meat sales are being suspended as a mark of respect for foreigners and people from ethnic groups,” an anonymous official with the administration was quoted as saying by Beijing Daily on Friday.
Giving up cultural identity to please foreigners
Personally, I think it’s sad that the Chinese are bending over backwards to please their international guests. I wish they were as sensitive about international public opinion when it comes to Zimbabwe or Sudan.
If dog meat is a part of Chinese culture and cuisine, then why pretend that it isn’t to please the foreigners?
Why don’t the Chinese just say “yes, some people in our country do eat dog meat – if you don’t like it, you don’t have to order it.”
After all, restaurants in China serve many other things that are “hard to stomach” for Westerners: jellyfish, camel’s feet, shark fin soup or chicken claws. Yet all of these are considered delicacies in China.
Maybe dog meat touches a sensitive spot in Westerners. I remember that coming across a dog meat butcher in Vietnam definitely came as a mild shock to me when I was there a few weeks ago.
But still: if it’s part of their culture, why should they get rid of it just to please me?
WordPress is blocked in China. Therefore I was only able to upload this post after having left the country.
Lunch at the palace
Lunch at a royal palace is something pretty unusual for me. But on my last day in Bangkok, Dusit Palace is really where I had my lunch.
O.K. – so it wasn’t exactly a 15 course state lunch with the Royals at one of the palace’s banquet halls. 
It was a modest snack at a nice little restaurant next to the Moorish-looking Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall.
The place caters mainly to the employees working in the different museums housed in the palace complex.
But still: for me, eating at this little restaurant was lunch at Dusit Palace! Sitting there on the restaurant’s porch, looking out into the lush royal gardens, I felt just a little blue-blooded.
I didn’t even mind that Thailand’s King Bhumibol hasn’t been seen at this palace for ages. I still enjoyed my lunch – even without him.
Caught in the rain
A tropical thunder storm began, just as I’d finished my meal. Mother Nature really opened the flood gates. It was quite a spectacle.
The pouring rain forced me to sit under the roof of that porch much longer than I’d planned. There was just no getting away without getting totally soaked.
After almost an hour of torrential rain, the palace gardens, the paths and roads were ankle-deep under water. The earth and the gutters just couldn’t absorb that much water in such a short time.
Royal presence
Should the Thai king, by any chance, ever visit Dusit Palace and suddenly get hungry, I could definitely recommend this little restaurant.
He should just make sure he doesn’t go to the big tourist eating joint at the main entrance – that has absolutely no charm whatsoever.
But at this small place next to Abhisek Dusit Throne Hall, he’d be able to chat with the locals, meet his staff, so to speak. I could recommend the rice with prawn with chilies and hot basil leaves stir fry. At 85 Thai Baht (1,65 Euro or 2.60 US Dollars), this dish wouldn’t even leave a dent in his the royal budget.
When the rain finally let up, I asked for the check and paid what I owed.
And when the waitress brought my change, I realized that King Bhumibol was there with me after all…
Hot dinner in Hanoi
In Hanoi, there are some eating places you go to because of the decor and others that you go to despite the decor. Cha Ca La Vong is one of the latter kind.
The place is any decorator’s nightmare with its neon lights, green walls and wobbly tables and chairs.
But – oh – the food! The food is absolutely scrumptious!
And the best thing is that they only serve one dish. So you won’t be spending hours studying the menu, trying to decide what to get.
At Cha Ca La Vong, there’s only “Cha Ca” – the signature fish dish. It’s so popular that it’s even lent its name to the street that the restaurant is on.
Know where to look, or you’ll walk right by it
Cha Ca La Vong has been run by the same family for generations. It’s located in a rickety old house in Hanoi’s Old Quarter. There’s no flashy sign, no line of people, no attractive exterior that’ll draw you to this traditional restaurant.
If you aren’t aware of what’s inside this shabby house, you’ll never notice it or think of going in.
Luckily, a friend had told me about it, so we stepped inside, climbed up the narrow wooden stairs to the left of the entrance, and made our way to the first floor.
Upstairs, one of the waiters showed us to our seats and placed a little laminated card in front of us. It told us that the only dish at this restaurant – Cha Ca – would cost us 90 000 Vietnamese Dong each – roughly € 3,50 or about $ 5,00.
After we’d managed to communicate that that price was just within our financial limits, we were on.
You’ve got to know how to Cha Ca
The waiter brought a clay oven filled with red hot charcoal to our table. He put a pan with sizzling hot oil and some pieces of fish on top of the oven.
In addition, we got some cold rice noodles in a bowl, some peanuts, a small plate with dill and Vietnamese herbs and a bowl with spring onions.
Next, the waiter threw some of the spring onions and herbs into the pan. The combination of frying fish, Asian spices, herbs and spring onions smelled great.
Unfortunately, we were clueless as to what should happen next: Should we take the frying pan off the grill at some point? Or should we also put the noodles and peanuts into the pan?
No, no, our waiter signalled, and demonstrated how it’s done: you put some of the cold rice noodles in your bowl, add some pieces of fried fish from the pan, sprinkle with some peanuts and add the fresh herbs.
The resulting combination was unbelievably delicious!
“This is the best dinner we’ve had in Vietnam”, my friend said.
I think it didn’t take us longer than fifteen minutes to clear that pan.
If you can’t stand the heat, don’t order the Cha Ca
But as soon we were no longer busy chowing down, we suddenly became aware of the fact that there was this extremely hot grill sitting right in front of us on our table. A grill with burning charcoal and a pan full of hot oil. A grill on a wooden table, in a wooden house, in the middle of the maze that is Hanoi’s Old Quarter.
How far to the next fire extinguisher in case the oil caught fire? How long would it take fire fighters to get here in case of an emergency? Kind of unpleasant thoughts.
We felt pretty relieved when the waiter finally took away that charcoal grill and just left us with our beers. And the bill…
Dinner doggie-style
I’m a vegetarian. I don’t eat meat. And though I don’t like the smell of raw meat at butcher shops, it usually doesn’t bother me very much.
But when I looked around an open-air market in Hanoi today, I did get slightly nauseous in one corner of the market. I came across something that I hadn’t anticipated: dog butchers.
Nothing for the faint-hearted
There were about three or four stalls selling dog meat. All of the animals had been skinned and grilled. Some were lighter in colour, others reddish brown and crispy looking.
As I walked by, a Vietnamese woman was buying some dog meat. I guess she didn’t want the whole animal, because all of a sudden, the butcher swung her big knife and hacked the dog that lay in front of her in two. WHACK!
And CHOP, WHACK, CHOP, the butcher continued her mad frenzy. In the end, she had chopped the grilled animal to pieces the size of goulash.
The butcher put everything in a bag, the Vietnamese housewife took it and walked away happily.
Dining with the dogs
I knew that there are dog restaurants in a northern suburb of Hanoi. But I hadn’t expected to stumble upon grilled dogs at the market stalls just outside my hotel. After all, it’s an upmarket hotel in downtown Hanoi.
But I suppose not many of the hotel’s international guests venture into this Vietnamese market – even though it’s just a few steps from the hotel.
It must be an acquired taste
The smell at the dog meat market stalls was strange. Hard to describe. Was it the smell, the sight or the idea of the dead dogs that made me feel sick?
The Vietnamese clearly aren’t as sensitive. For them, dog is just as common a dish as pork, beef or chicken.
A tourist from New Zealand, whom I talked to a few days ago, said he had tried dog meat at one of the city’s dog meat restaurants. He said he liked the taste.
I don’t think I could have eaten dog meat. Even if I wasn’t a vegetarian, dog is where I’d draw the line. Seeing and smelling those grilled dogs at the market made that very clear to me.
In Vietnam, it’s mostly men who will eat dog. Women don’t seem to enjoy it as much. Eating dog is associated with aggressiveness.
But even the Vietnamese men will not eat dog meat at the beginning of the lunar month. That’s considered bad luck.
So At the beginning of every lunar month, Hanoi’s dog meat restaurants stay closed.
And the ladies selling grilled dog at the street market have a few days off. To walk the dog?
A Taste of Colonial Vietnam at Hanoi’s Indochine Restaurant
One of the great things about being in Hanoi is the food. It’s amazing. So many great restaurants!
The Indochine at 16 Nam Ngu Street in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem district is one of the favourites among expats and tourists. 
It’s tucked away in a little alley and if you don’t know where to look, you’re likely to walk right by it.
The sign isn’t very big or flashy and the entrance is just an unobtrusive walkway into the nether regions of the building.
The house is a beautiful old colonial building with dining rooms on different floors and a courtyard. 
The dining areas still have their old tile floors and are furnished with tasteful antiques.
The service is friendly and the food tasty, though a bit pricey for Vietnamese standards.
And since the portions aren’t very big, you shouldn’t really go there with growing boys (unless you don’t mind ordering five or six dishes for them and leaving a whole big pile of Vietnamese Dong behind).
Last time we were there, we had veggie spring rolls and a hot and sour vegetable soup as appetizers.
Unfortunately, the soup wasn’t as spicy as expected, but I guess the place caters to what it thinks are the foreigners’ tastes. The soup tasted mostly of tomatoes and pineapple. Not bad, but not spicy enough for my taste.
Our main course included shrimp with chillies and cashew nuts and a fish hot pot. Both dishes were very tasty, but there just wasn’t enough on the plate.
One thing that was unusual for us in the shrimp dish is that the cooks hadn’t taken out some hard pieces of lemongrass. Every time you took a bite, you had to chew on some pieces of lemon grass that felt like wood or straw in your mouth.
When I use lemongrass in my kitchen, I either cut it up in very small pieces that will cook through so you won’t really notice them when you’re eating, or if I use larger pieces of lemongrass, I take them out of the dish before serving.
The other dish we had as a main course was a fish hot pot. Again, the “pot” was more of a “pottie” (pardon the expression). Very good, but just not enough if you’re really hungry.
The fish was glazed before it went into the hot pot and that added a very slight sweet taste to it. Wonderful!
One thing that’s reassuring about the food quality and the cooking at the Indochine is that you can watch the cooks prepare the food.
When you cross one of the restaurant’s courtyards, you’ll automatically walk by the kitchen. 
There, you can see pots and pans, spices and herbs – and watch half a dozen cooks and helpers slaving away in the heat produced by the stoves and ovens.
But – oh oh! – what’s that microwave in the top right corner of the picture doing there? I guess that’s the curse of modern civilization…
