In true FamilyStyles fashion, these next few posts are dedicated to our mom, an amazing person and one of the reasons that Irene and I place such an importance on good food and family. We did some traveling around Paris and Southwest France last month to visit friends, a trip which happened to come soon after reading My Life in France by Julia Child. After consuming tales of Parisian markets and laborious and decadent French meals, my mother was inspired, bien sur, to do her own search for some serious French food. As the lucky daughter already on the same side of the Atlantic Ocean, I joined her for an epicurean tour of La Belle France and her wealth of gastronomic delights.
From simple picnics of bread and cheese on park benches to Michelin-lauded establishments of the culinary elite, my mother and I ate our way across both the city and the countryside. Through well-laid plans as well as happy coincidences, our meals were shared with old friends from all over the world either living in Paris or happening to travel through the region at the same time.
One of the amazing things about Paris is how easy it is to find incredible food on every corner, from boulangeries to patisseries to shops teeming with foie gras or artisan chocolates. We started one day at Sainte-Chappelle on Ile de la Cite, a popular tourist destination that was completely worth the wait…
and then proceeded to visit another the spectacular sight of Paris – the fromagerie.
This shop, on Ile-St-Louis, featured a front window display teeming with chevre of all shapes and sizes. Some looked like moldy grey logs, others like newly hatched dinosaur eggs, others like petrified stones or lumpy balls of grout scraped off your shower tiles. But the inside…smooth and creamy and bursting with earthy, grassy flavour.
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Only in Athens can you have your moussaka with a colorful rainbow-bright salad of shiny purple olives, green peppers, and red tomatoes, a side plate of olive oil and herb-dusted grilled bread and an accompanying view of the Parthenon.
You can also visit one of the most hardcore, badass, no-yuppie-bullsh*t central markets I’ve ever had the pleasure (and underlying sense of intimidation) of wandering through. This ain’t no Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid , lushly teeming with expensive port and tapas with caviar and design nerd tea towels. This is a serial killer basement of unidentified animal dismemberment. If you’re squeamish, I’d just stop right now…
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I always wish I had access to a table large enough to seat 20 of my best friends around it for an epic dinner party. I still haven’t managed to acquire such a table or a room large enough to put it in, but I got a taste of what it might be like at a great event last night called the Hub Feast. It’s a potluck and a dinner party, a chance to meet great people and talk about all sorts of cool food things, and an opportunity to make an unnecessary amount of insanely indulgent peanut butter cream cheese-frosted cupcakes. What more could you ask for?
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Welcome to the Moulin Rouge Ramble, a dimly lit den of cabaret, cake & corsets that popped up on Great Windmill Street a few weeks ago. Hosted by the amazing word-of-mouth agency 1000heads, decorated by the creative visionary Ali O’Malley, and captured on film by the fantastically talented Mark, it was quite the evening to remember…as long as you didn’t down too many absinthe cocktails.
Come check out Mark’s amazing photos of our ephemeral Parisian creation filled with candlelit erotic poetry, beef bourguignon, fishnet stockings and freeflowing champagne…
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I absolutely decimated an enormous chocolate bunny this weekend. I know, Easter was a while ago. Kind of like how I started making this list of links a while ago. But it’s still good. Just like the bunny was still good. REALLY good. Basically, this was me:
This image is courtesy of Hyperbole and a Half, a blog that had our office on its knees in paroxysms of laughter for a good portion of the workday. Thanks, H+1/2, for destroying our productivity like a 7000% deadly shark-sloth.
Anyway, those links. Here’s some cool stuff we’ve been reading when not stuffing our faces with defenseless chocolate creatures.
Eat-onomics: The Ten Most Inspiring People in Sustainable Food [Fast Company]
Q&A with Chef Dan Barber: Can Organic Farming Feed The World? [TED Blog]
People Who Photograph Food and Post the Pictures Online [New York Times] Who are these freaks?
Jamie Oliver’s TED Wish: Teach Every Child About Food [TED]
20 Fascinating Lectures for Serious Foodies [Online Universities] Lots of our faves here, from Malcolm Gladwell to Dan Barber to Jennifer 8. Lee to a ‘renegade lunch lady.’
How To Make Perfect Pork Crackling [Guardian] Finally, a decent reason to buy a hair dryer.
Q & A: Oscar Week: Food Inc. Director Robert Kenner [TIME] Yeah….this was from a long time ago.
I love salmon nigiri, I love cucumber maki, I really love shrimp tempura and avocado hand rolls and, as the mini button says, I love Yelp. Thanks to the brilliant folks on the Yelp team here in London, I got to attend a sushi-making class at the brand new location of the paper crane-bedecked, double-fried soy garlic ginger chicken-producing Tsuru Sushi. In case you’re wondering, I also love paper cranes and all things double-fried.
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I spent what might be the ideal local/urban/farming/foodie Saturday in San Francisco during my visit last month. Ferry Building Farmers Market + Alemany Farm + dinner with friends to feast on all our accumulated goods = serious eating happy times.
It started at one of my favorite places of porkaliciousness on the planet, the San Francisco Ferry Building Farmers Market…
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Imagine a world where your bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich comes in one surprising multitextured bite of Essence of BLT. Where Death of Elvis is a completely bizarre and completely delectable mouthful of solid yet somehow softly melting banana, peanut butter, nutella and jam. Where the cheese never seems to end and where the wine flows like the water dripping from the ceiling…
It sounds like Wonderland, but don’t be fooled by the 7 foot tall cross-dressing Alice in spectacularly tall heels opening the door. It’s 99, a pop-up restaurant run by friends Whetham and Dave, who have combined their impressive and inventive artistic, hosting, and culinary talents to create a spectacular and stomach-busting evening of performance, gastronomy and often a topsy-turvy combination of the two.
I was honored to be invited along to help out in the kitchen on the final night of 99’s first run. Donning pristine chef’s whites in the kitchen of their Victorian mansion in Hackney, I joined chefs Dave and Hugo to whip, dip, bread, layer, chop, and see the magic happen behind the scenes.
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It might just be the best bread in the world. A warm, soft, tantalizingly nutty sesame loaf, fresh from the ovens just after 5pm…
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I’ve just returned from a whirlwind trip up to Newcastle upon Tyne for The Go Game and there were so many beautiful things to see in the city.
Beautiful Thing #1: The view of the River Tyne, including the Tyne Bridge and the Millenium Bridge, from the Viewing Box of the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.
And the reverse view of the BALTIC, an old flour mill, from the Millenium Bridge. If you happen to be anywhere near Newcastle, go see Damien Hirst’s fascinating exhibition Pharmacy and marvel at the view.
Beautiful Thing #2: The plum tart from the charming and brand new six-week-old BUEE Cafe and Bistro at Side Cinema. I actually didn’t eat it; we went for the pecan pie and the raspberry cheesecake baked by the chef-husband of the proprietor-wife instead – more on that in a bit – but it’s a thing of beauty all the same.
Beautiful Thing #3: The goat cheese and roasted vegetable pizzaiola from Cafe Royal, a gem of a cafe amidst the shops of the city centre featuring artisanal bread from their own bakery.
So much to see in Newcastle and so much to eat! Let’s take a closer look at our two exciting foodie finds…
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by mei on February 28, 2010
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