“French people believe very strongly in the idea of terroir: We believe in locally made products, especially those that have a strong sense of identity and heritage. If I do my part and make my salt with as much respect as possible, then I’ve done my job.” —Hervé Rocheteau, Île de Ré, a small island off the western coast of France (pictured)

Tell us about your job.
I am a salt maker: My job is to manage a series of salt evaporation ponds, also known as salterns or salt pans. I feed saltwater from the ocean into different ponds very slowly; then the sun and the wind evaporate the water. Finally, the salt concentration becomes so high that it crystallizes, and results in sea salt. My work consists of managing the water flow [the hydraulics] in accordance with the weather, and then harvesting the sea salt. We harvest gros sel (large-crystal salt) and fleur de sel (fine crystal salt). 

What led you to your current position?
The decision to make a radical change in my professional life. One day I reassessed my skills and reexamined my expectations for my personal and professional life. 

What is your favorite part of the job?
I like everything about the job. In fact, I’d say it’s a passion more than it’s a job. I love the environment; it’s so peaceful to be around nature all day, to hear the birds. I like the variety too; you need to be versatile to do this job well. Each day I build tools, read, interpret and anticipate the weather, manage water flow….

The job changes according to the seasons: in winter, the work centers on restoring the salt ponds. In spring, you make sure everything is ready to go by cleaning the ponds, and refilling them with water. In summer, we harvest the salt: we “pull” [or rake] the gros sel and “pick” the fleur de sel. In the fall, you either do some construction on the ponds, or flood them with water to protect them against bad weather.

What is a typical day like for you?
A typical day depends on the season, and on the weather.

In spring, as soon as it’s warm enough and if it isn’t raining, I clean the ponds. I remove the deposits of silt left over from the last season and the winter, and use it to sort of grease the salt basins. Then I put water back into the ponds.

In the summer during harvest, if it’s sunny, a typical day goes like this: At sunrise, I rake half of the gros sel. Gros sel is harvested on what we call “tiles,” because the crystallizing ponds are five by five meters. My salt farm is medium-size, and I have 70 tiles. (Hence, I rake 35 of them at a time.) The next morning, I rake the other half, and so on and so on.

Around 11am, I redo the water levels in the “nannies” (our name for the penultimate salt basins), as well as the tiles, which are the farthest basins. I let salt collect on the edges of the basins until 2pm.

A 2pm, I “roll the salt”: I drive a small tractor over what we call the “rolling track” and then I load up 35 piles of salt. (This adds up to around two tons of gros sel.) Then I unload the salt onto a “tasselier,” which is sort of an elevated pile where I keep the season’s harvest. We call this pile of salt the pilot.

From 2pm to 5pm: I use this time to sort the fleur de sel from the day before. I sift through it manually to remove any dirt, seeds, or insects. Often, I also modify the water-flow settings into the basins, depending on how the weather is behaving. The process is similar to heating milk on a stove; you need to constantly watch it and be ready to make little changes.

Between 5pm and nightfall, when the weather is good, I harvest the fleur de sel. Fleur de sel are very fine crystals of salt, which can be found floating on the surface of the salt basins. They form in patches due to the wind blowing over the basins. If I don’t collect the fleur de sel in the evening, the morning dew will sink it, and it will be lost.

How would you say salt speaks to the culinary landscape of Île de Ré?
 I’m not a cook myself, but my products are used widely in both local and national cuisine. Any cook “worth his salt” should season their broths and soups with fleur de sel or gros sel.

On Ile de Ré and along the Atlantic coast of France, salt evaporation ponds date back to the Middle Ages. (My salt farm dates to the 15^th or 16^th century.) During the Middle Ages and before, salt had great monetary value and was used as currency itself. (The word salarium comes from Latin, and was the ration of salt given to Roman soldiers as a salary.) Clergy and noblemen bought salt farms, and then rented them to farmers. Salt was very important economically because it allowed for trade with the northern countries, who needed salt to preserve fish and game into the winter. 

The prevalence of salt declined slightly in the 1950s, with the arrival of the refrigerator, because people were no longer dependent on salt as a preservative. Also, newer and faster forms of transportation made salt cheaper and more accessible to everyone.

In the 1980s, salt workers from Guérande, a famous salt city in the region of Brittany, realized that the profession was starting to die out. (These men were an average of 60 years old.) They decided to try to revive the profession by starting a foundation, with the help of the French government. Since then, the average age of a salt maker has lowered to 40 years old.

In my opinion, the revival of the salt-making profession is not due to political will (i.e., the desire to save a few jobs). I think the reason for the revival is twofold: First, it is economically viable and attracts tourism to the region. Second, French people believe very strongly in the idea of “terroir.” We believe in locally made products, especially those that have a strong sense of identity and heritage. 

What’s one iconic dish a visitor to Île de Ré should not miss?
Sea Bass baked in a salt crust. Or fava beans à la croque en sel, which are raw fava beans served with just a sliver of butter and a pinch of fleur de sel.

Eat Your Word focuses a lot on a city’s historic, traditional foods. What do you think the future of food will look like in Île de Ré?
I hope Île de Ré, and France in general, holds onto its culinary identity and traditions. I hope to continue to enjoy unpasteurized cheeses, old varietals of tomatoes and apples, and so many other “unsterilized” items that haven’t been available in the States for a long time. Long live wine, not soda! Long live good bread, not Big Macs and junk food!

I think many French people share my point of view; unfortunately due to economic constraints, not everyone can afford to eat healthy and organic foods, simply because it costs more. If it is the will of the people, and of the government, to return to a more careful and healthy form of agriculture, then the future of cuisine is safe. (Organic Big Macs!). If, however, the processed food industry wins, I hope I won’t be alive to see it.

Voilà, the debate can last forever, because there is so much to say about food and cuisine.  At my level, I am only a small link in the chain, but it’s the butterfly effect: If I do my part and make my salt with as much respect as possible, then I’ve done my job. If my salt can make an American tasting it happy, why not!

Translated from French by Cristina Sciarra.
About the author: Cristina Sciarra is a writer, a photographer, and a culinary enthusiast. In her spare time, she travels and creates recipes for her website, theroamingkitchen.net. Got your own bottle of gros sel or fleur de sel? See her recipe for sardine butter on EYW.

It’s not uncommon these days to see a city’s best local foods represented in its sports stadiums: Tony Luke’s iconic cheesesteak in Philly’s Citizens Bank Park, Shake Shack burgers in New York’s Citifield, peach cobbler in Atlanta’s Georgia Dome. But we were still pleasantly surprised with the offerings we saw this weekend at Marlins Park, the brand-new high-tech home of the Miami (née Florida) Marlins. Despite resembling a futuristic alien spacecraft, with its gleaming-white exterior and cool retractable roof, the stadium goes the extra mile to spotlight cuisine reflective of the multi-culti coastal city’s roots—and even those of the visiting team.

Along the perimeter of the stadium are some ballpark standards—hot dogs, pizza, popcorn, pretzels, nachos (served in a helmet!)—but you can also track down locally sourced shrimp burgers (Burger 305), grilled mahi-mahi tacos (Miami Mex), Cuban-style rice and beans (Goya Rincon Habana), and 100% kosher deli sandwiches (Kosher Korner). In what we can only hope will be a new ballpark trend, the food program here encompasses a “farm to fork” initiative, sourcing seafood and veggies locally when possible. But the real magic happens behind left field—and no, we don’t mean poolside among the dancers and DJs at the Clevelander, an outpost of the iconic South Beach club also in this part of the park. Around Section 28 is a little area called Taste of Miami featuring three city institutions—go there, and be hungry.

First stop: Papo Llega y Pon. Apparently this eatery was long an Allapattah hole-in-the-wall until some meat-loving Marlins employees got to it and introduced its signature pork sandwich to the baseball masses. The pan con lechon ($7) is a mess of chopped roast pig (tender pork shoulder and crunchy bits of skin), piled into a soft white roll with salt, onions, and hot sauce. We wanted more meat and less bread, particularly with that addictively crispy chicharron mixed in, but it was still delicious—and much more interesting than the (still tasty) Brother Jimmy’s pulled-pork sandwich on the stadium’s other side. Papo also sells tamales and chicharrones.

Next is Latin American Grill, an offshoot of the popular three-restaurant South Florida chain, here focusing its energies on Cuban sandwiches (and their kin, the medianoche). This place is a veritable assembly line of perfectly executed Cuban sandwiches—one after another, handmade in front of you, leaving no doubt they are as fresh as can be (see video at bottom). Hot off the press, served with crispy mariquitas, or plantain chips, this simple sandwich is a stadium highlight, despite the fact that ours alone lacked pickles—an unfortunate oversight for a $12 sandwich. Get a side of extra mariquitas ($6) to bring back to the stands; the garlic mojo sauce alone is worth the cost (pictured at top).  

Finally, there’s Don Camaron, for all your seafood needs. We settled on some comparatively light fish ceviche ($10), made with tilapia and including tomatoes, corn, red onion, and cilantro. The citrusy flavor was muy refreshing, and if we’d had any money left we would’ve gotten a few oysters on the half shell, too. This is the stand where you forget you’re at a ball park.

We hope that visitors to Miami make a beeline for these quintessential eats, but there’s something in it for Florida residents here, too—they can try a different local food every game from the visiting team’s city, as the Burger 305 stand in Section 19 serves a suitably regional dish depending on who’s in town: lobster rolls for the Red Sox, fried ravioli for the St. Louis Cardinals, cheesesteaks for the Phillies. For the Mets on Sunday there was supposed to be corned beef Reubens, which, in our quest for Cuban pork, we failed to notice. But we love the idea of welcoming opponents with a taste of their home, and celebrating regional dishes in the process. I have to admit I’d try the fried ravioli if the Cardinals had played this weekend…

Here's a peek into the making of those Cuban sandwiches:

We just announced our new contest winner and want to give the Food Memory we selected some airtime on the EYW Blog, too.

User alexfhalpern wrote the winning entry, entitled “We Came to Eat Fish.” Why do we love this story? As we noted on the Contests page, it’s a well-written tale of a basic grilled fish dish enjoyed on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya, but like elsewhere in Africa, it’s not just about the food: It’s about the energy of the setting, the sheer “life force” of the lake, humming with those who depend on it for survival and play. It’s about the pride of the Kenyans who brought the author there, four hours out of the way, to feast on fish. It’s about food’s irreplaceable role in bringing people together—providing that simple impetus to go somewhere and eat—opening that cultural window, and then stepping out of the spotlight, as if to say, “You can thank me later.” To us, this captured the essence of traveling and eating in (parts of) Africa.

Alex wins a yearlong subscription to the excellent AFAR magazine, courtesy of AFAR Media. Congratulations! Here’s the winning story in full:

We Came to Eat Fish

We pull up to Lake Victoria, hungry for fish. Dozens of stalls are set up, each one with tables in front displaying their tilapia. The fish’s eyes bulge like cartoons, caricatures of their own species, staring straight at me while flies feast on their dry skin. It is a four hours' drive from the orphanage where I volunteer to the lake, and we make the journey with Swahili beats blasting from our open windows. I am with four Kenyan men, towering above me in height, who work for the orphanage and want to show me their favorite place in Kenya.

We choose a stall to eat from and sit down. Two plates of tilapia, completely intact, are served, grilled to perfection and flavored with cooked tomatoes. They come with two bowls of kale and ugali, maize meal cooked into a thick paste. Finally, a cold Coke, the bottle sweating in the humidity, tops off the meal. The men show me how to roll the ugali into a ball in the palm of my hand and press my thumb in the middle, making a spoon with which to scoop up the kale. Though almost tasteless, the gritty ugali and chewy kale stumble on my tongue until my mouth settles into a smile. We rip the fish apart with our hands, carefully picking out tiny bones. We devour everything but the tail; the fish is tender and juicy, and I imagine the water from the lake flooding into my mouth.

A few feet away, men scrub their cars or motorcycles in the shallow of the lake. Women do laundry, wiping their brow with the cool water between shirts. Children swim completely naked, pushing each other’s heads under water. I am scared for them, having heard about man-eating hippos and crocodiles that roam the waters, and exotic diseases like bilharzia or dengue fever. The lake is abuzz with people who know that, in a country where running water is a rarity, Lake Victoria is a life force and a luxury. People come from far and wide to make use of the lake, a precious source of free and unending water. Or, like us, they come to eat fish. —alexfhalpern

Photo credit: Johan Swanepoel/Shutterstock.com

Before I met my French boyfriend and his family, my culinary repertoire was sadly devoid of small sea creatures. Sure, I might occasionally have ordered mussels when out to dinner, but let’s face it—those mussels tasted only of what they were sauced with. I had never tried a clam or oyster, nor did I particularly care to. Scallops made me cringe. I was also fairly certain that sardines and anchovies were probably the
same thing.

But my shellfish ignorance was not to last. When I moved to Paris three years ago, my boyfriend and I started making regular excursions to his familial home in Angoulins sur Mer, a fishing village nestled into the western coast of France, famous for its oysters and mussels. A few miles out to sea, Île de Ré is the source of yet more fish, and some of the world’s best sea salt. The range and scope of what local fishermen pull from those waters has not ceased to impress me yet.

Lunch and dinner at my boyfriend’s house became a kind of regular adventure, and still is. His family favors multiple small courses over single, main dishes, so every meal becomes an opportunity to sample various things. Each new plate that emerges from the kitchen is a surprise, and since they buy much of their food from local vendors, it is a surprise that changes with the seasons. Eating at their table has demystified food in a way we often willfully obfuscate in the States—lettuces are dirty when plucked from the earth, fish come with scales and bones.

In the three years since my first visit to Angoulins sur Mer, I’ve tasted much that was once completely foreign to me. I’ve also learned to appreciate simplicity. For instance, I now know that a sprig of thyme, a bay leaf, and a measure of white wine help mussels taste most like themselves—clean and so slightly saline. I’ve learned that naturally harvested scallops are much smaller than their American counterparts, and are best served still attached to their ruched shells by a comma of coral roe. Sardines, bright silver and as long as your hand, are best in the summer when you can eat them outdoors under an arbor, simply grilled and doused in lemon juice. Nothing but practice makes removing their tiny bones any easier.

In the regions around Angoulins sur Mer, there is a strong tradition of mixing seafood with salty butter. This is due to the proximity to Île de Ré, where they favor butter palpably salted with flecks of gros sel (large-crystal sea salt). I’ll never forget the first time a platter of tiny rose-colored shrimp was placed in front of me one day at lunch. I watched my boyfriend pull off a head and flick away the shrimp’s soft shell in one stroke. He sucked the brackish head juice before placing what remained of the shrimp onto a heavily buttered slice of brown bread.

Now that we live in New York, it is nearly impossible to find anything like the variety of seafood we enjoy when in Angoulins sur Mer. Luckily, you can buy very good quality sardines in a can, which I do every time we visit France. American supermarkets have started catching on to this fact, and it is possible to find good sardines here too, often imported from Spain or Portugal. Canned sardines are tasty served simply on buttered toast, but I think it’s worth the extra few minutes to make your own sardine butter. I mix American butter with chunky flakes of gros sel from Île de Ré (also now available in fine supermarkets and specialty stores online), so that, even in New York, my boyfriend and I can enjoy a taste of his home.

SARDINE BUTTER RECIPE

Serves about 6 people

1 ¼ sticks/10 tbsp salted butter, slightly softened (If you can find butter with actual crystals of salt, great; otherwise, mix in a pinch of gros sel or, failing that, the finer fleur de sel.)

1 can good-quality sardines, packed in oil

juice of ½ a lemon

about a tbsp minced chives

freshly ground black pepper

1. Place the softened butter in a medium bowl. Drain the sardines, and add them to the bowl. Use a fork to mash the butter and the sardines together. Have fun!

2. After a minute, add the lemon juice. Keep mashing until incorporated. At the last minute, add the chives, and some black pepper.

3. Move the butter to a ramekin, or roll it in plastic to form a log. Refrigerate it for at least an hour or so.

4. Serve the sardine butter with toast.

About the author: Cristina Sciarra is a writer, a photographer, and a culinary enthusiast. In her spare time, she travels and creates recipes for her website, theroamingkitchen.net. Also see her Q&A with a salt harvester from Île de Ré, France.

If you had to choose one quintessential dish to represent your hometown, what would it be?

This is a question we at Eat Your World ask ourselves, and everyone we meet, all the time—though we ultimately step it up from one dish to, say, 40. (We never said we were completely sane.) It’s a question we relish asking again and again for every new place we visit, each answer a unique culinary discovery we couldn’t have made anywhere else.

We started, of course, with our own hometowns, both original and adopted: the Jersey Shore and New York City, respectively. In New Jersey I loved revisiting the pork roll and cheese sandwich—at one point my favorite school-cafeteria lunch, I must admit—of my youth, the boardwalk funnel cake I grew up craving (pictured above), and the staple sub sandwich my family still brings to the beach every summer. In New York it was hardly work to make extra bagel runs (below) and indulge in cheesecake taste tests with friends, in the name of celebrating the city’s many iconic foods. We’re not even done yet—soon we will be paying tribute to Chinatown via the beloved soup dumpling. And we just may get around to giving the more recent trend of cupcakes some airtime on the site.

We’ve realized, in the course of slowly building up our New York City content, that it’s easy to get a little lax about the place in which you live, to think you’ll “do it one day”—this is precisely why many New Yorkers will reluctantly admit they haven’t yet tried the pastrami at Katz’s (below), or been to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for that matter. It’s also sometimes more difficult to think objectively about the foods that really speak to your city, because they’re so close to you. You might not realize that the pedestrian dish you grew up eating in your hometown could be very interesting for a foreigner to try.  

It’s time our hometowns got the credit they deserve. We hereby declare May to be Hometown Foods Month. We want to hear from you, via photos, Food Memories, and comments, about the quintessential dishes and drinks in your own backyards. We want you to tell the world what your hometown has to offer the annals of gastronomy, no matter how minor it seems. We are practicing what we preach, too: Just today we paid heed to the evolving brand of Italian-American food in Little Italy.

So, once again: If you could choose one quintessential dish to represent your hometown, what would it be?

Get uploading here.

Somewhere between waking up to peaceful lagoon views; swimming in a warm, empty sea before breakfast; and feasting on spicy pumpkin stew at lunch, I started to wonder: Why isn’t this place swarmed with tourists?

View of lagoon from bungalow, Tribewanted, John Obey beach

I could guess the answer—this was Sierra Leone, the tiny corner of West Africa best known for an ugly slavery history, a decade-long civil war (1991-2002), and the violent thriller Blood Diamond—but it still didn’t make sense. As I surveyed pristine John Obey beach, where Scott and I stayed our first few nights at eco-tourism venture Tribewanted, the word “paradise” easily sprung to mind.

John Obey beach, Tribewanted

Note to the National Tourist Board: If you’d like to make a good first impression on all future visitors to Sierra Leone, send them directly to Tribewanted. Created by Brit Ben Keene and Italian Filippo Bozotti in 2010, after Keene founded the concept on a Fijian island in 2006, the Sierra Leonean initiative takes the community-based tourism model—in which the community, a fishing village in this case, has a stake and sees real benefits—makes it sustainable (using solar power, organic gardens, compost toilets, bucket showers, local building materials, etc.) and throws in a cross-cultural twist: Why not have visitors and villagers live together, and learn from one another? Visitors have the option of volunteering any skill they have, or not: The founders also took care to select a village situated on a vacation-ready strip of spectacular coastline, backed by jungly hills.

Bucket shower, Tribewanted

 

Communal kitchen, Tribewanted

Our six days at Tribewanted, then, were filled with swimming and playing with the village boys, reading in hammocks and chatting around the communal kitchen table, hiking forests and endless stretches of vacant beach. We studied the local cuisine, of course, visiting the chaotic local market, foraging for edible fruits, and cooking with the kitchen staff (recipe to come!), and were helped immensely by the fact that Tribewanted serves Sierra Leonean dishes every day for lunch—spicy, hearty food that always includes a generous heap of tasty, locally harvested country rice. Each night after copious amounts of local seafood and poyo (palm wine), we found our cozy bungalow via headlamp, fell asleep to a chorus of frog calls and the crashing of waves, and awoke to birdsong and, well, the crashing of waves.

Waterloo market, Freetown Peninsula

Groundnut soup with country rice, Tribewanted

Our swimming buddy, Osman

It was idyllic. We could have left, quite satisfied, after a few days at Tribewanted, but we itched to see more of the country. Armed with a 4x4, a driver, and guide/fixer named Sergeant Bull, we drove to dusty inland cities Kenema and Bo—and through their diamond-mine-pockmarked surrounds—to soak up their distinctly relaxed energy, staying in rundown, generator-powered hotels and going out dancing and drinking at night. We ensconced ourselves back in nature, under a tent on stunning Tiwai Island—a tropical wildlife sanctuary and solar-powered community conservation program in the tranquil Moa River—where we hiked amid primates between local meals meticulously prepared by the resourceful village chef. We haggled for blankets and gawked at the overcrowded streets and elegantly dilapidated colonial architecture in Freetown, the mountain-backed capital city so named for the liberated slaves brought to settle there in 1787.

Bo Town, where the streets are lined with diamond shops

Tropical Tiwai Island

Sierra Leone, it turns out, is an exceedingly rewarding place to visit, full of discovery and unexpected charm. But while we met countless inspiring people living and/or working there—a freelance tour guide turned community activist, a U.S.-educated lawyer working to untangle her country’s judicial system, Australians building orphanages, Brits running a kids’ football academy—travelers were scarce. In fact, in our 12 days we encountered just five others who were there for the sake of travel, and only one of them came from outside Africa. What gives?

Roadside food vendor, Kenema

There are a few obvious explanations. It’s expensive, between the airfare, visa, yellow-fever vaccination (a requirement), and sky-high gas prices. There are lingering notions of Sierra Leone being unsafe or unstable (it’s neither). There’s not much infrastructure for tourism, nor regulation of things like cutting down trees (unfortunately, there’s startlingly little forest left to protect). And for a country on the bottom rung of the U.N. Human Development Index, with a life expectancy just shy of 48 years, there are plenty more pressing challenges in the way. Boku, as the Krio- English-speaking Sierra Leoneans would say.

Freetown's King Jimmy Market

But for the adventurous and outdoors-loving traveler, Sierra Leone should most definitely be on the radar, as should those smart, forward-thinking tourism initiatives we came across—Tribewanted, Tiwai Island, the handful of other community-based ventures we saw along the Freetown Peninsula. They make the most of the country’s natural beauty and cultural heritage while taking measures to protect them. They employ and educate the local population and see that they benefit from sharing their land with visitors. Even as mass-market hotels and big beach resorts break ground nearby, these small ventures inspired us to rethink what travel in developing countries should look like—and gave us hope that sustainable, community-based tourism just might be where Sierra Leone is headed. 

Hiking near River No. 2 beach, Freetown Peninsula

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series of posts on Sierra Leone. Stay tuned for more, including detailed coverage of 15-plus traditional Sierra Leonean dishes. We'll leave you for now with the giddy farewell we received from some kids when we stopped to change a flat tire on the Bo-Kenema road (it seems we interrupted their dance party). Go ahead and watch: We dare you not to smile.

A few days in Prague are hardly enough to soak up the medieval romance, abundant history, and vast amounts of beer for which the city is known. But try we did last October, when we hit the ground to round up all the tasty underappreciated Czech food we could. Some important things learned: 1. Autumnal, leaf-blanketed Prague is a beautiful time to be there. 2. Old Town is remarkably peaceful in the rain. 3. There will always be Dixieland on the Charles Bridge (Karluv most).

One of many temples to dibi, or grilled meat, in Dakar, this dibiterie boasts a cult-like status in the capital: It’s said to be musician Youssou N’dour’s favorite, dispensing inexpensive, expertly prepared food at all hours in suitably questionable hygienic conditions. After hearing the place reverentially spoken about by more than one trusted expat, we knew we had to find it.

Problem is, nobody had any clue where it was. Armed with limited directions— “somewhere near the Sandaga bus station”—and even more limited French, we wandered the dusky streets around the area marché, or market, where hours earlier we’d elbowed our way through crowds of sellers. Now it was quiet, empty but for some passersby and a handful of peanut vendors. We asked five different people if they knew a dibi place nearby, trying different variations of “dibi?” “Youssou N’dour dibi?” and “dibi Haoussa?” (the last one referencing the Hausa people of Niger, indicating also the type of dibi found here—Nigerien style, not Senegalese).

After 15 minutes of walking in circles, we found a man who showed some recognition, and even spoke a little English. He led us through an unmarked, completely nondescript doorway into a dim, sweltering room with a few grill stations, a dirt floor, and blue, smoke-stained walls. Eyes still adjusting to the smoky dark, we were ushered to a wooden bench and pointed to the meat on the smoldering grill before us. Moments later we were presented with some tiny pieces of meat (mutton, we guessed) threaded skewer-like onto delicate sticks, the meat coated in a spicy, powdery cornmeal-esque mixture. Noticing our hesitation, the grill man brusquely showed us one way to eat it: wrapped in mayo-spread bread with freshly grilled onions and mustard.

It was absolutely delicious, a flavorful sandwich enhanced by its rugged, shadowy surrounds. Just don’t ask us how to get there.

It’s April 16, which means: It’s National Eggs Benedict Day!* But also: We have a new User and Food Memory of the Month!

This time around we’ve selected Jessie as our User of the Month, and one glance at her profile illustrates why: The girl gets around! To date she’s contributed 21 food pics, from Guatemala to Sweden to Syria, always with detailed descriptions. Most recently she put Bolivia on the map for us, adding foods traditional to La Paz and Santa Cruz, including the colorful queso humacha shown above.

Our new Food Memory of the Month is “The Kindness of Strangers in the Seychelles,” by spiceboxtravels (who blogs about food and travel at Spiceboxtravels.com). It’s a story about a memorable meal in the archipelago nation made possible by some unasked-for assistance, reminding us of the many times we’ve experienced the generosity of perfect strangers while on the road—and how those moments tend to translate to the best travel experiences.

The winners will be featured on our Get Involved page for the next 30 days or so. Congratulations, and we hope to see more from both of you soon. As for the rest of you: Contribute today, and your praises might be sung next!

*If you’re still thinking about eggs Benedict, read more about the NYC-born dish on Eat Your World.

What happens when Team EYW shows up to a fancy eco-lodge with the best restaurant in Senegal? They wind up eating at the bar man’s house.

Every friend of ours who has been to Senegal recommended we go to a hotel and restaurant in the Sine Saloum region called Lodge des Collines de Niassam. Besides having beautiful eco-friendly bungalows built into baobab trees and overlooking a bird-filled lagoon, the property is notorious for having the best French-inspired fare in the country. It was a big splurge for us, especially after three weeks of pricier-than-anticipated travel around West Africa, but we decided to go nonetheless, calling it an early seven-year wedding anniversary celebration.

It was quite an adventure to get there: We opted for the low-budget local-transport approach, ultimately rolling our luggage 1.5 kilometers down a rocky dirt road after arguing with our sept-place driver, who refused to take us all the way to the hotel. I can't imagine many other lodgers arriving in this fashion, but we tend to be unconventional—usually in the attempt to save a few dollars.

The lodge proved to be worth the hike, as even along our route we were welcomed by gorgeous scenery and some of the most exquisite birds imaginable. We dusted ourselves off in our stunning lodge, which offered 180-degree views of gently lapping lagoon and a horizon lined with baobabs, and headed out to our much-anticipated
first meal.

Lunch was everything we could ask for: perfectly chewy bread, freshly made cheese from the lodge’s own cattle, local grilled fish, blini, basil mousse. It was our first non-African meal in three weeks and felt incredibly indulgent. As did the strong $4 house rums, each infused with a different local fruit.

Afterward we hung out with the lodge’s bar man, Gorgui (whom we quickly dubbed “Georgie”), learning about the activities on offer at Niassam. Realizing the costs exceeded our budget—i.e., it was something like US$40 a person to visit a local market—we decided we were content to take advantage of the pool and our lovely room to just read, play Yahtzee, and relax, with not even wifi to distract us.

Then Laura remembered that in Dakar we’d met a man who told us about a traditional dish from the Sine Saloum region called thiere mboum (pronounced “cherry boom,” though we liked to emphasize the BOOM part). Despite being technically “off” from website work while at Niassam, we asked Georgie in our best bad French if he knew where we might find it. He said of course, and he could even arrange it for us. Skeptical, we asked if this was another $40-a-person local-food tour; Georgie laughed and said no: We could come to his house for dinner the following night and try the dish there. He called his wife to see if that was OK. To help pay for ingredients, she asked for the local equivalent of $5.25, which we happily handed over.

So there we were, having just had a delicious meal in what’s widely considered the best restaurant in Senegal, arranging to swap one of our two included dinners to try our luck at some local thiere mboum…and we couldn’t have been more psyched. The next day, Georgie excitedly arranged for us to meet his sister, another employee at the lodge, for a ride to Palamarin village up the road. Georgie’s brother Seku met us at Georgie’s house; we quickly learned he spoke Spanish. Finally we could communicate with our new friends! (French and Wolof were not getting us very far.) After a sunset walk along the village beach and a meet-and-greet with the entire extended family, it was time for dinner.

A rug was laid down in Georgie’s one-room concrete home, with just enough space between the bed and the dresser for eight of us to sit. Georgie’s elegantly dressed wife, Mymona, entered the dimly lit room—one small fluorescent light was borrowed for the occasion—carrying an enormous covered shallow bowl; she placed it inside our circle of touching knees. At last, the thiere mboum was unveiled.

Greenish-brown millet couscous (thiere) filled the large bowl, and Mymona, using a second smaller bowl, ladled out heaps of a peanutty leaf-studded sauce around the outer edge of it. Each person stuck to the section of bowl right in front of them, using their right hands to scoop the food up and into their mouths. I opted for the spoon that was offered (as there wasn’t a napkin in sight) but managed to match the intensity of millet-to-mouth speed of my new Senegalese friends. The flavors were clean and earthy, with a slight tang. It wasn’t a mind-blowing dish, but fresh and authentic, made as it probably has been for hundreds of years. After a few final ladles of sauce, all that remained was one small pile of millet couscous in the center of the large bowl.

As it’s known to do, thiere mboum’s filling nature put us all into a food coma. The two adorable small boys in the room, Georgie’s son and nephew, still had energy, clearly on a sugar high from the African cola passed around (we guessed that this special-occasion beverage was the real reason for our small financial contribution). But the adults were done: It was time to head home.

There was only one way to end this evening: on the back of a donkey. Georgie’s friend pulled up with his donkey rig, and Laura, Georgie, and I hopped onto the flat-board back. Under a beautiful moonlit sky, we crawled our way back to Niassam, the poor donkey slow and sluggish under our weight. It was almost as if he’d had his own thiere mboum before the journey.

“Beer and spirits were an essential part of everyday life for the first European settlers of our country. Malting barley was brought over on the first ships with other essentials, like wool and wheat. Records show it was first planted on Martha’s Vineyard in 1604. I would like to eventually grow and malt the original variety of barley that was grown in New England.”—Andrea Stanley, Valley Malt

Tell us about your job.
I am a maltster: I malt grains for brewing and distilling. The process
of malting starts with soaking grain, sprouting it, and drying it. It takes one full week to malt a batch of grain, and we malt in 2,000-pound (one-ton) batches. We started in 2010 with one malting bin and now have four malting bins. On any given day I work at the malthouse cleaning grain, turning the malt, smelling it, touching it and making decisions about when to start drying a batch based on how it smells and feels. I also clean grain and malt, weigh it into 50-pound bags, and then stack those bags on pallets to ship out to our customers. Along with the daily physical labor, there is an equal amount of office work. I spend a lot of time on the phone talking with local farmers about grains, talking with brewers about malt, and keeping a malting schedule based on customers’ orders.

So that it’s clear to our readers, please briefly explain the role of malt in the brewing of beer.
You may be wondering, “What is malt?” Malt is grain that has been sprouted in order to be used for brewing and distilling. In the sprouting process we are optimizing on the natural process of the grain’s growth into a plant, making what was a hard and not-sweet grain into an easy-to-crunch, malty sweet product. Once we finish malting, and clean off the rootlets that grow during germination, we ship the malt off to be milled and brewed. It is this sweet malt that will provide the color, flavor, body, and fermentable sugars to beer.

What led you to your current position?
Originally my husband, Christian, and I were thinking that we would like to start a brewery in our town. We wanted to make a “truly local” beer—not just brewed locally, but to also have all of the ingredients grown locally. When we looked into this and talked with brewers, they would say, “Great idea, but you cannot make beer from grain; you make beer from malt.” When I started looking into where we could send our grain to have it malted, I realized that the closest malthouse was in Wisconsin. So instead of starting a brewery, we decided to start a malthouse. It became very clear to both Christian and me that this would be our contribution to the burgeoning craft beer and local food movement.

What do you love most about your job?
There are three things that I love about my job.

1. The physical labor and working so directly with barley and grains all day. When I am turning 2,000 pounds of sprouting grain each day, I feel like I am working in my garden.

2. The relationships we have with farmers. Many of these relationships have turned into friendships. We’re both learning about organic farming and are now starting to farm, too. This year we will be growing about 40 acres of oats, barley, and wheat in Hadley and Northampton.

3. The relationships we have with brewers and distillers are incredible. We work with so many creative and talented people who are happy to have a local malthouse to get even more creative with. Their willingness to take risks and try new malts gives me the freedom to explore malting heirloom grains such as spelt and emmer. In the end, the craft beer drinker also benefits because she gets to now try these funky new beers.

What are the biggest challenges of being a maltster?
Keeping up with orders, trying to make a consistent product, and growing a business with limited resources (both time and money) are the biggest challenges.

How does your product speak to the culinary landscape/history of Western Massachusetts?
We are fortunate to live in an area with great energy around local food and beverages. Our local artisanal bakers have been using local grains in their breads now for a number of years, and now the possibility of tasting local grains in beer and spirits is also opening up. We had an event in March where all the food and drinks were made from locally grown ingredients. There were eight beers made with our malts, many also with local hops as well as local wine, cider, and ginger libations. At the end of the evening, I just grinned and thought to myself, “We just ate, drank, and danced the night away, and every part of it was homegrown.” How many other places can offer the same level of localness?

I also have to mention that historically Hadley, Massachusetts, did grow barley [pictured] and, in fact, had a malthouse in the 1650s. Our soil is fertile and has made some incredibly tasty beers and spirits.

What’s one iconic dish (or beer!) in Western Mass that a visitor cannot miss?
MassWhole is an amber ale made by Wormtown Brewery with 100% Massachusetts ingredients. The barley is grown in Hadley by Joe Czajowski and malted by us. The hops are from 4 Star Farm in Northfield and Divoill’s Farm in Royalston.

EYW focuses a lot on a city’s historic, traditional foods and drinks. What do you think (or hope) is the future of food/drink in the Northeast?
Beer and spirits were an essential part of everyday life for the first European settlers of our country. Malting barley was brought over on the first ships along with other essentials, like wool and wheat. Records show that it was first planted on Martha’s Vineyard in 1604. There were licensed maltsters that came over on the first ships along with other tradesmen such as blacksmiths and coopers. These people were incredibly brave and hopeful and hardworking, and they enjoyed beer. I would like to eventually grow and malt the original variety of barley that was grown in New England. I hope to find a brewer that would be willing to make a historical beer in honor of these original settlers of New England. Perhaps we could find a few beer drinkers who would be interested in tasting a beer as it may have tasted 350 years ago.

On EYW, we ask users to share short food memories related to travel, a favorite meal, growing up--anything. Can you share a brief food memory with our readers?
My most vivid memories are usually triggered by smell. We recently traveled to the U.K. to tour old malthouses where the maltsters are still hand-turning malt on the floor. All of the smells were familiar, and it just made me realize how the smell of malting barley dates back to the beginning of civilization. It is a sensory experience that we share with every other maltster. Like baking a loaf of bread, it is an experience that is borderless and timeless.

Check out where you can find Valley Malt on tap in the Northeast U.S., and read more about drinking local beer in the Boston area on EYW here.

Yesterday we arrived home in New York City after three extraordinary weeks traveling around West Africa. (We apologize for the spotty on-the-road updates here: Wifi was not easy to come by for most of the trip.) We have loads of written and visual content to organize and post on EYW, including two full local-food sections for Senegal and Sierra Leone (pictured above is delicious binch (black-eyed beans) and yams from a streetside vendor in Bo, Sierra Leone). But our very first order of business is launching a new contest courtesy of AFAR, our favorite travel magazine (now available on both iPhone and Android) for its focus on real-deal experiential travel.

While we explored the native cuisines of Senegal and Sierra Leone, our requests for specific dishes were always greeted with huge surprised smiles. “You want African food? Really?” came the unbelieving reply. Now we know we’re not the only travelers seeking out the local goods in Africa, and we’re eager to expand our knowledge and coverage of regional foods there, so…we need your help! If you have an original photo or story of local food in Africa—anywhere on the continent—we want to see it on Eat Your World. The user who uploads our favorite entry will win a yearlong subscription to AFAR, but we will tweet ALL of the entries that come through to us, to show the world a little something about regional African cuisine.

Have you indulged in kitfo in Ethiopia? Had your share of local wine and seafood in South Africa? Tried ibihaza after gorilla-spotting in Rwanda, or pap between safaris in Namibia? We want to hear about it!

Read more about this contest here, and then upload away!

We're stuck in Dakar's airport, waiting for our delayed flight to Freetown, and thought we'd use the opportunity to quickly share the Q&A we recently did for journalist Cyrus Farivar's blog. The task proved harder than we'd thought: After a wasted $4 and half-hour of struggle with the French keyboards in the main lounge downstairs, we realized that our business-class seats--the last two seats available on this flight when we purchased them last week--entitled us to the "Prestige" lounge upstairs, where free wireless internet, food, and drinks await. Prestigious indeed!

So here we are in the lap of luxury, with A/C, cushy chairs, our iPad hooked up, and all the apples and peanuts, local juices, and cold beers we'd ever want. All we need now is our plane to touch down in Dakar and pick us up. Which may or may not happen today. As they say in Senegal: Inshallah!

Read the Eat Your World interview here.

After just three days, dusty Dakar has drawn us in with its street-corner baguettes, mellow fishing villages, surf-friendly beaches, and mad markets. A highlight among our explorations thus far has been the fish market at Soumbedioune, a cove on which the men's brightly painted pirogues, or canoes, are pulled from the water each evening, and the day's haul of seafood put out to sale. One side of the market is crowded by grill stations, manned by women cooking fresh fish over hot coals.

Between about 4pm and 6pm, the boats are lugged in, requiring a team of heaving men and two logs (or big empty metal canisters) to facilitate movement. The shore is crowded with onlookers, football-playing kids, fish vendors and buyers, and coffee sellers, waiting to pass the fishermen a plastic cup of hot cafe Touba, the locally popular sweet-spicy brew.

On the beach vendors set up shop on the sands, or prowl the area with fish in hand.

In the lot above the beach, many more vendors set up their fishy wares on long wooden tables. Giant barracuda, red carp, grouper, local favorite thiouf, sardines, lobster, piles of prawns, sea urchin--you name it, they likely have it. Still, one fisherman told us how small the daily catch is compared to the past, and how they have to fish deeper waters farther from shore in order to find much, blaming the giant Chinese, Russian, and Korean trawlers that have illegally invaded the locals' space.

A huge bonus for us, we caught an impromptu celebration on the beach at Soumbedioune. According to what we could piece together, it was a group from one of Dakar's traditional fishing villages, celebrating the annual sacrificial slaughter of a sheep in hopes for a good fishing season. 

As for the fish itself, we split one, which the grill woman called poulet de mer, or chicken of the sea, served with a delicious onion-mustard mix, for a whopping $2. Scott was directed to a local grocery for beers--this was a moment that demanded a cold brew!--and we devoured our grilled fish in the fading light, in view of the sea and earshot of the party on the beach. Thus buoyed, we bought a half-kilo of prawns for about $6, had them skewered and grilled, and shared the lot with our neighbors, a group of young Dakarois. We already have plans to return for round two!

Tomorrow we leave for three weeks in Senegal and Sierra Leone.

The vaccines have been given, the bags (almost) packed, the subletter for our New York apartment is in place. We should already be there—we pushed back our trip partly to avoid Senegal’s protest-riddled presidential election on February 26, only to have it go into a runoff election happening smack-dab in the middle of our visit there (March 25). Hopefully we’ll be in the area during a positive historic moment, when peace and democracy win the day. According to friends in the area, that is what should happen.

In recent weeks we’ve been asked “why there?” a few times, either in the context of “how do you choose where you want to travel next” or “you have a food website; why Africa?” The truth is, we’ve wanted to visit Africa for a long time now (only Scott has been to the continent before, and just to Morocco). We considered South Africa, for the fact of having friends of friends there, and it’s a more obvious choice from the local-food angle. The great safari opportunities are in the south and the east, but those parks and luxury tents aren’t going anywhere—we’ll do that trip when we’re older (and perhaps a bit wealthier).

We like the idea of visiting a more adventurous, comparatively less tourist-catered corner of Africa. Before we started the website, we had our sights on Uganda and Rwanda, on the recommendation of a good friend who’s done work there. But post-EYW we knew that anywhere we go should have some distinct culinary flair, so we shelved the idea for now. After a brief flirtation with Ethiopia, we heard rave reports from friends who’d visited Senegal, Mali, and Ghana a few years ago. Of course! We’d had delicious, interesting Senegalese food in New York before. We already loved the music. We’d seen its Endless Summer beaches. Suddenly, West Africa was it.

Unfortunately, once we booked the flights, Mali started having a little problem called
Al Qaeda and Ghana, we decided, was too pricey to fly to from Dakar. We cast around for an idea and landed on it via the same friends: Sierra Leone. Here is a little country best known for Blood Diamond and rebel boy soldiers fighting a dreadful decade-long civil war, which ended in 2002. Though ravaged by war, beset by a lack of infrastructure, and consistently ranking at the bottom of the U.N.’s Human Development Index—number 180 of 187 in 2011—Sierra Leone boasts a freely elected government and relatively low crime rates. Which is to say nothing of its incredible Caribbean-like coastline, by-all-accounts welcoming people, diverse wildlife, and relaxed vibe. (Of course there will be local food, which we’ll document, but that’s beside the point here. We will be working extra hard in Senegal, particularly in Dakar’s many restaurants and street stands, on the food front.)

Please note that you may experience some delay in getting your uploaded photos and stories approved while we’re away. Don’t be discouraged; we’ll get to it as soon as we can. There will also be a slowdown in new Destinations content until we return—please bear with us. We do intend to update the EYW Blog from the road, however. Watch this space, as well as our Twitter feed and Facebook page, for live updates from Senegal and Sierra Leone.

With any luck, we’ll soon be hearing, Why not West Africa?

“I try to portray the colors of the Oaxacan landscape in the food I prepare: color, color, color! Oaxaca
is such a vibrant place, and having this reflected in the food you eat here makes Oaxacan cuisine even more enjoyable.”—Chef Pilar Cabrera,
La Olla 

Tell us about your job.
Currently I manage the kitchen of my restaurant La Olla, in Oaxaca, Mexico, and I am also the cooking instructor at Casa de los Sabores Cooking School.

What led you to become a chef?
I started cooking at an early age. My love for the smell, taste, color, and texture of food motivated me to go to university and get a degree in Food Engineering and Nutrition. After graduating I worked for Herdez-McCormick in the Development and Sensory Evaluation Department for four years, later moving back to Oaxaca to fulfill an even bigger dream: opening my own restaurant. In 1994 I opened La Olla, a restaurant that features what I believe to be the most important aspect of any restaurant: a healthy kitchen.

What’s your favorite part of your job?
I love to eat and to travel. I also thoroughly enjoy seeing other people appreciate my food, the food that I prepare and the ingredients and recipes that I put together. It makes me so happy to see the smiles on my clients’ faces when they try mole for the first time, or when they dig into a dish that I created. It’s a wonderful feeling!

We loved your mole negro and sopa de frijol at La Olla. How does your food speaks to the culinary landscape of Oaxaca?
I base my approach to food on an earth-friendly philosophy, working with regional farmers to provide local flavors while helping the local economy and serving organic products when available. I try to use as many local ingredients as possible, and I also try to portray the colors of the Oaxacan landscape in the food that I prepare: color, color, color! I try to make every dish a reflection of the colors of Oaxaca. Oaxaca is such a vibrant place, and having this reflected in the food you eat here makes Oaxacan cuisine even more enjoyable.

Are there any ingredients that you have trouble finding locally?
Chilhuacle chile is an ingredient that’s gaining popularity in and around Oaxaca, and it is sometimes difficult to find due to its high price. A lot of the chile salespeople refuse to sell this specific type of chile because it is too expensive for them to carry. Also, the different varieties of corn are getting harder and harder to find: red, purple, yellow. It would be nice to be able to use all of the different colors of corn in our dishes at the restaurant and cooking school, but it’s just not possible anymore.

Name some Oaxacan dishes that a visitor should not miss while in Oaxaca.
Tlayudas (giant corn tortillas topped with asiento, black beans, cheese, vegetables, grilled meat, and salsa), mole (different varieties), chiles rellenos (stuffed chiles), and mezcal (of course!).

What is your favorite place to eat in Oaxaca, other than your own restaurant?
The most expensive/popular restaurant is not always the best one, especially when dining in Mexico. Wherever they make fresh tortillas and use fresh ingredients, like most street food stands and in the markets—that’s where I like to eat.

Eat Your World focuses a lot on a city’s historic, traditional foods. What do you think is the future of food/drink in Oaxaca?
The future of food and drink in Oaxaca is actually quite a sad story: A lot of recipes are getting lost, and traditional ingredients are disappearing. Also, very few people are worried about conserving traditional recipes. For example, that chilhuacle chile, used in mole chichilo, is getting harder and harder to find. Therefore the recipe for this mole is changing because of the chile’s availability. More herbs and other chiles are being used instead of the chilhuacle, and this inevitably changes the taste and consistency of the mole. Globalization also plays a part—more supermarkets and less real mercados. And family traditions are changing: You used to go to work in the morning, go home in the afternoon for a few hours and eat a big lunch, and then return to work, but not anymore. There’s no time, so therefore recipes and traditions are getting lost.

On EYW, we ask users to share short food memories related to travel, a favorite meal, growing up—anything. Can you share a brief food memory with our readers?
My fondest memory is learning to make mole with my grandmother: no rules, no real recipes. Roasting the chiles, going to the mill, adding the chocolate and the salt—it’s not about the quantity but about the quality, and somehow the dishes always came out perfectly, with no measuring cups or teaspoons necessary....it just works. I’d have to say that is the best memory I have of growing up around traditional Oaxacan food. My grandmother’s mole—it always tasted the same, though she never used a recipe.

Check out La Olla and read more about Oaxacan foods and drinks on EYW here.
 

Got a suggestion of a food producer we should interview? Let us know!

Street food: In the advent of the recent food-truck revolution, it’s been given a romantic connotation. But street food to us has always meant those dirt-cheap, true-blue local joints that you find while wandering a new city, the kind of places that make you immediately envious of the patrons and skeptical of the grub—a healthy suspicion that your gut instinct will either embrace or ignore. It might be termed the five stages of street food:

1. “Look at all the people chowing down on this corner! They are clearly enjoying that food.”
2. “Damn, does it smell good right here!”
3. “I wonder if this will make me sick.”
4. “Eh, it’ll be fine: big crowd, no flies, everything’s freshly cooked. I see plastic glov—oh, maybe not. Well, there’s a washbasin, at least.”   
5. [mouth full] “Pass the hot sauce?”

At Eat Your World, we know we have a lot more street food to cover—and we look forward to one day eating our way through the great street eats of Morocco and Taiwan, Turkey and South Korea, and documenting them on these pages. This list is clearly not meant to be a “best of the world.” (To date us just a bit, the last time we traveled throughout Southeast Asia, we both had film cameras, and it did not even occur to us to use a precious shot or two on Bangkok’s or Ho Chi Minh City’s street food.) But while we have street food on the mind, we’d like to highlight a few of our favorites that we’ve encountered while traveling for this website. Some embody the down-and-dirty type described above, some are more refined, but all were sold and eaten outside, on the street or in a market.

Torta de Tamal, Oaxaca

We loved many street foods across Mexico, but this simple torta de tamal—a tamal Oaxaqueño, with chicken and mole negro sauce, sandwiched inside a soft, slightly hollowed-out bolillo roll—surprised us with a level of deliciousness we did not expect from a carb-on-carb concoction. The woman selling them outside our guesthouse in Oaxaca quickly became a part of our morning routine. (Read more.)

Dahi bhalla, Delhi

Delhi’s a gem for street food, and this chaat, from a perpetually crowded counter in the heart of Old Delhi, is one of the most popular in town—particularly on a sultry day, when the cooling, creamy dahi (yogurt) beautifully balances the hot curries you’re undoubtedly also consuming. Smothered unseen by the yogurt is a peppery bhalla (bready fried lentil fritter); on top are pomegranate seeds, chewy raisins, and sweet tamarind chutney. Like many chaats, this is a perfect amalgam of sweet, tangy, creamy, and spicy. (Read more.)

Halal chicken/lamb over rice, NYC

You either love or hate New York’s omnipresent “street meat.” At the good stands, we are firmly in the former camp, finding its aroma irresistible and its simple mix of seasoned meat, fluffy rice, fiery red sauce, and cooling white sauce seriously satisfying…especially at 2am. (Read more.)

Poffertjes, Amsterdam

These fresh, pillowy mini pancakes stole the show for us at Amsterdam’s Saturday farmers market in the Noordermarkt: hot and doughy vessels for lots of powdered sugar and butter. What’s not to love? (Read more.)

Elk & buffalo brats, Denver

A former repo man and biker is now Denver’s resident tubed-meat genius, grilling up “gourmet game dogs” on the street (and now in a restaurant too). Served with a healthy schmear of cream cheese, the elk jalapeño-cheddar brat and the Southwest-style buffalo brat were both excellent—juicy and spicy, with a crazy-addictive creaminess thanks to the cheese—and the meat is locally sourced.
(Read more.)

Arepa con queso, Cartagena

The most classic Colombian street food, the arepa is a hot, savory disk of corn and white cheese, slathered with butter. ’Nuff said. (Read more.)

Toasted cheese sandwich, London

The humble cheese toastie, what some of us would call grilled cheese, gets elevated by top-notch ingredients—shredded Montgomery’s cheddar, chopped leeks/onions/garlic, Poilâne-baked sourdough bread—in London’s outdoor markets. The crunchy, gooey, nutty result is comfort food at its artisanal best. (Read more.)

Local scallop sandwich, Victoria, B.C.

From a refurbished shipping container on the harbor came this incredible “burger”: three local Qualicum Bay scallops with aioli, tartar, and lemon-pickled onions, topped with a tempura pickle. The fresh taste of the sea mingled with crunchy, creamy tang. Heaven. (Read more.)

Your turn: What's your favorite street food? (If you have a picture of it, show us!) And where MUST we go next for the best street eats?

A few summers ago, I conducted my graduate-school research at a health clinic in a batey, or rural community, about an hour north of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. Punta Cana’s high-end resorts and all-you-can-eat buffets are a stark contrast to the impoverished former sugarcane plantations that make up the bateys in the island’s interior. Electricity is rare and subject to apagaones (blackouts) that can last an entire day, which has serious consequences for rural health clinics trying to operate blood labs and store vaccines—and severely limits the menu dished up for clinic staff.

During my 10-week stay, I slept on the floor of an empty clinic room with a handful of Canadian medical students doing internships. Meals were served family style; food was brought in at the beginning of each week from the capital. Fruit and vegetables were nonexistent, and the “meat” option was an overly processed bologna that was dubious on Monday mornings and scary by Wednesday. Despite being on an island, our fish selection was limited to canned sardines. For breakfast we had white bread dipped in sugary coffee; a typical lunch was fried plantains with spaghetti and rice. Yes, spaghetti and rice. Everything was flavored with Maggi bouillon cubes, which left us parched and thirsty. Dinner was often boiled plantains with hot sauce, or fried eggs and dumplings. (Dumplings were usually served at the end of the week, when pickings were slim. A mixture of water and flour, they were hard to choke down even with copious amounts of rum and Presidente.)

The clinic closed on weekends, so we’d all catch a bus out of town on Fridays toward one of the gorgeous playas lining the island’s north coast. These places were like culinary meccas to us with their beachside shacks serving fresh fish, beans, even the occasional leaf of lettuce. However, nothing hit the spot quite like the piña coladas served at every beach bar. After days of bland starches, something about the sweet richness of the coconut milk and the tangy bite of the prized pineapples was mouthwatering. My friends and I used to suck those babies down like water, stocking up in preparation for another week of tastebud-numbing cuisine.

Flash forward five years: Back in New York City, I’m on maternity leave in the dead of winter. It was a brutal time for me; I felt isolated and lonely, cut off from friends and my usual calendar of travel and fun. In many ways, it wasn’t so different from those long weeks living at the clinic! Back then I couldn’t sleep because of the stifling heat and mosquitoes; now it was because of a colicky baby. Maybe that’s what inspired me to host a piña colada party for the other moms in my son’s playgroup. I remembered how those piña coladas had cheered me up, and, while my fifth-floor walk-up was a far cry from the beaches of my favorite island, I thought a tropical cocktail with other frazzled moms might just do the trick.

And so, on a cold February afternoon, we all gathered in my apartment to sample one of the Caribbean’s most famous exports. I had spent the day searching for cream of coconut only to be shown coconut milk time and time again by the staff of Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and other neighborhood groceries. Don’t make that mistake! I finally found the real stuff in a local bodega. Then I got some ripe pineapples, ice, and the DR’s most famous local rum: El Brugal. Some recipes call for heavy cream or ice cream, but even nursing moms can’t handle that many calories with their booze!

The whirring blender, sticky pineapple, and stories from our pre-baby lives brought us new moms together that day. For a few hours, we escaped from our constant talk of sleep training, nursing, and baby weight to sip our piña coladas and relax. I think the babies felt it too.

The Perfect Piña Colada

Mix 1 cup cream of coconut (like that from Coco Lopez), 1 cup fresh pineapple, and about a half-cup rum. Add them all to a blender with ice. It will be thick, so keep some pineapple juice on hand if you want to thin it out. Serve with a wedge of pineapple.

Around the 15th of each month, we’ll select a new User and Food Memory of the Month. For the former, we’ll look for a user who contributes in both quantity and quality—that is, someone who’s uploaded at least eight regional food/drink photos with intelligent, entertaining descriptions…often the kind that make us want to get on a plane and go find that dish right now. For our Food Memory of the Month, we similarly will choose a story that we particularly loved, whether for being especially vivid, thoughtful, or funny.

Our newest User of the Month is Raluca, who has contributed 14 great photos and descriptions thus far, spanning the globe from her hometown of NYC to Sri Lanka (we especially enjoyed the Polygamy Porter Ale pic she added from Utah).

This month’s Food Memory comes from zboehmova, who made us giggle with her tale of eating her first sandwich in exotic America.   

We hope to see more from both of you soon! And to the rest of our users: Get uploading, and you might be next!

We’d like to introduce a new recurring feature in Eat Your World: trip-recap videos! Every time we travel somewhere for EYW, we’ll create a one-minute video—compiled of photos and video footage we shoot on the road, edit, and set to music—to act as visual sum-up. And, no, it won’t be entirely about food: This is our opportunity to show you other sides of a destination, as well as a little bit of us.

Our first video is from North India, where we spent a few weeks last spring. It was challenging to stick to a minute for this one, to edit the hundreds of photos we took between the two of us in Delhi, Agra, and Udaipur. Ultimately we wanted to capture just a little of the frenetic pace, vibrant street life, and curious locals we encountered at every turn. (OK, and some of the food, too. It was too damn good to ignore.)

“I do what I love to do. I love to cook, I love to make folks happy with my food, I love to deepen my knowledge of cooking, I love going in to work. I love working the line.”
–Pat Martin, owner and pit master, Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint

Tell us about your job.
I’m a pit master. I’m at Martin’s almost every day. We’re open seven days a week. We have no freezers, we have no microwaves. We make everything on our menu from scratch every single day! We cook whole hog, brisket, shoulders, chicken, turkey, wings—we do it all.

What led you to your current position?
I grew up in a family of amazing Southern cooks—men and women! When I got to college at a tiny school named Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tennessee, I found myself hanging around the old BBQ joints all the time. I loved it and wanted to learn it. But I didn’t set out in life to do this: My dad was a government bond trader and I ended up following in his footsteps, in corporate bond sales. I got married, and she was a songwriter in Nashville. So it was either move back to Nashville or go to New York/London, and I just didn’t want to live up there. Well, we worked our tail off to get back to Nashville—and then she divorced me. We were too young and we knew it. I didn’t want to leave Nashville, so I stayed. Started a landscape construction and grade business and remarried. I liked the money, but the work didn’t interest me. One day one of my guys totaled a bunch of our equipment. That was my excuse to finally do what I had dreamed of. So on a small line of credit and a shit ton of hard work, I opened Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint in October 2006. We haven’t looked back since!

What’s your favorite part of your job?
Well, I do what I love to do, first and foremost. I mean, who can actually say that? I love to cook, I love to make folks happy with my food, I love to deepen my knowledge of cooking, I love to meet new people, I love to travel. I love going in to work. I love working the line.

We loved your smoked-overnight ribs, pulled pork, and chicken (above), which we were lucky to eat at an event in Bristol, Virginia. How would you say your food speaks to the culinary landscape of Nashville/Nolensville?
You know, Nashville wasn’t really known for great BBQ, and I hope we’ve helped put Nashville on the map, so to speak. We really have some great spots here in town. I’m just honored to be part of that “conversation,” when folks speak of the restaurants that define Nashville and the surrounding areas.

What’s one iconic dish in Nashville that a visitor cannot miss?
You gotta have a beer at Yazoo Brewing’s tap room. You gotta have a cocktail at Patterson House. You gotta eat a pizza or charcuterie plate at City House. You gotta eat crawfish at 55 South. You gotta see the farm that Capitol Grille has—farm to fork! You gotta take a piss in the men’s bathroom at the Oak Bar in the Hermitage Hotel (I know that’s weird, but trust me!). 

That’s not quite a “dish,” but we agree—it is a must! EYW focuses a lot on a city’s historic, traditional foods. What do you think is the future of food/drink in the Nashville area?
Nashville is a very modern and progressive city, largely thanks to the entertainment industry and its influence throughout the world—and if you are thinking “country music,” then I can tell you there is so much more to learn about the cultural landscape here! Nashville has almost doubled in size since the mid-1980s, when it was a regional Southern city. Thanks to that growth, Nashville’s palate has really grown, really taken off. Ten to 15 years ago we were lagging in terms of restaurants, chefs, etc. Now it’s a completely different landscape, and Nashville is on its way to being recognized as one of the very best Southern cities in terms of food and dining.

On EYW, we ask users to share short food memories related to travel, a favorite meal, growing up--anything. Can you share a brief food memory with our readers?
My mi-mi King’s biscuits and blackberry jam. My dad’s steaks. My mom’s fried chicken. Slugburgers and short Cokes with my pa King. Hot summer nights in Mississippi frying catfish with my pa-pa on the carport. My ma-ma’s coconut cake. BBQ sandwich at Thomas & Webb in Henderson, Tennessee.

Check out Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint, and read more about Nashville-area foods and drinks on EYW here.

I remember the days of always having one camera, two lenses, and a flash with me on my travels. That’s all changed with the iPhone. Last October I (finally) bought one, and happily tossed my old Samsung that could hardly connect to the internet into my ATC (antiquated technology drawer). I quickly fell in love with the portability and playfulness of my new phone’s 8-megapixel camera and actually became stressed about traveling with it. Would I still use my Canon 5D? Would I learn to rotate? Would I have to take pictures of everything with two cameras?

My first trip dealing with this dilemma came a month later, when Eat Your World headed to Amsterdam with some friends. My immediate observation was that I took way more photos than is usual for me. I documented everything with the iPhone, moments for which I would never have used my Canon: at the airport, on the plane, our first night out. I had a ball and spent every free moment uploading the pictures to my Instagram app, choosing an appropriate filter. I was consumed. I was obsessed. Our second day it rained, and my bulky Canon never even made it out of the bag. With ease the iPhone captured countless memories in bars, restaurants, inside our rented apartment.

Day three saw sunshine, and I finally remembered the fine piece of equipment I had ignored for 48 hours. With my 5D, I strolled the canals of Jordaan, framing photos and enjoying every click of the camera. I zoomed in and out, knowing I’d have some nice big files to work with when I got home. Every so often I’d pull the iPhone out of my pocket for a quickie. I’d found my happy medium: Each camera will have its place in my future—at least until the iPhone can take 50-megabyte photos.

Reviewing our food map en route to the airport (iPhone)

Sunny day in the Jordaan (5D)

Colorful bikes by the canal (5D)

Laura & friends at the Seven Bridges (iPhone)

Any other photographers out there have this dilemma?

We are pleased to announce that Eat Your World was featured today in The New York Times’ Diner’s Journal blog.

What a great way to kick off 2012! The response has already been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and we’re thrilled our “ambitious,” “world-roaming” “work in progress” website about “regional foods that visitors shouldn’t miss” is getting such recognition just a few weeks out of the beta-mode gate. (Apologies to Zagat!)

Also glad we managed to post this smoked fish entry before too many New Yorkers came looking for it.

A few hours after the NYT piece, Lifehacker wrote about us, which really pushed our traffic through the roof—and then crashed us for about 20 minutes. We took the opportunity to upgrade our servers, as we can only hope this happens again. 

Huge thanks to all you early adopters out there who have supported us through this adventure. Now to try to focus on finishing up our Prague section…

If you’re still hungry for North Indian food after our post on papri chaat and butter paneer masala, check out this post on Foodists.ca, in which we expound on our discovery of, and love for, chole bhature (curried chickpeas with fried bread). Recipe included, of course.

Related: Recipes From Afar: Papri Chaat & Butter Paneer Masala, North India

“Everyone we hire at ICOB spends time working on the farm so they can truly understand and speak to our culture.
They have a real connection to not only
the farm, but also to all of the people who work so hard growing and harvesting
the oysters.” –Skip Bennett, founder, Island Creek Oysters; co-owner, Island Creek Oyster Bar

What is your role at Island Creek Oyster Bar?
My role is largely one as a link to the farms, the farmers, and many of the seafood products.

What led you to your current job? 
Years ago, I heard about the Hog Island Oyster Bar out in San Francisco. After a trip there, I came back looking for a way to do something here in Boston. It seemed logical for the brand, and the intent of Island Creek Oysters has always been to get as close to the consumer as possible.

What’s your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part is actually knowing the people that work there. Everyone we hire at ICOB spends time working on the farm so they can truly understand and speak to our culture. As a result, they all have a real connection to not only the farm, but also to all of the people who work so hard growing and harvesting the oysters. Our team at ICOB is definitely an extension of the ICO family.

We loved the oysters and baked beans at ICOB. How would you say the restaurant fits into the culinary landscape of Boston?
Our connection to Boston, Duxbury, Maine, and Maryland—[the latter two] where [chef and co-owner] Jeremy Sewall and [co-owner] Garrett Harker are from, respectively—shows through in the menu, design, and character of the restaurant. Beyond that, I think the city was ready for an upscale seafood restaurant/oyster bar that offers the definitive seafood experience for locals and visitors alike. I’d love to think we have the potential to become the iconic seafood restaurant that Bostonians recommend to their out-of-town friends. 

Name one iconic dish in Boston that a visitor cannot miss.
Jeremy’s oyster sliders are quickly becoming just that. People seem to love the lobster roe pasta as well, which is Jeremy’s spin on a surf-and-turf concept. Being a waterfront city, when you think “iconic Boston” it’s hard not to think seafood. Clam chowder would be an obvious one. Some of the newer oyster bars have done great spins on that traditional New England dish. Jeremy uses the littleneck clam, a smaller, more tender quahog—you should always use quahogs!—which gives both great flavor and texture. 

EYW focuses a lot on a city’s historic and traditional foods. What do you think is the future of food/drink in Boston?
I hate to jump on the bandwagon, but the obvious answer is local, sustainably farmed food. The concept can be taken too far, but I really think people feel good about knowing where their food comes from. We serve oysters from both coasts, but we list all of the farmers on the menu and the servers know many of them personally. We can tell you where the oysters come from, how they were raised, and often quite a bit about the guy who’s raising them. This is true of much of our produce as well. Our concept is kind of farm-to-table, and everyone’s committed to staying true to that. Even our beverage program—we recently started carrying a Boston-based spirits line called Bully Boy Distillery, which is two brothers making Boston’s first craft spirits.

On EYW, we ask users to share short food memories related to travel, a favorite meal, family food traditions—anything. Can you share a food memory with our readers?
As an oyster farmer, I never dreamed that my oysters would lead to so many amazing meals. Before we partnered in ICOB, I was fortunate to have Jeremy cook for me in his own restaurant [Lineage, in Brookline, MA] a few times. It was always over-the-top. I’ve had the opportunity to eat at Per Se a couple of times—nothing can really compare to that. Another meal that really sticks out was one prepared for me by my friend Michelle Bernstein, when she worked at Azul in Miami. It was the first time I had eaten food like that—every course was something new and amazing. I can still remember the foie gras with chocolate. Michelle brought out every course herself, even though the place was packed. I remember feeling very special. It felt like a really warm welcome into the food world.

A half-year after returning home from a few weeks in North India, I thought it would be a good idea to cook some Indian dishes for friends. Twelve friends, to be exact.

It wasn’t long after I emailed said friends that I began questioning the wisdom of this decision.

Indian food is notoriously difficult for a non-Indian to pull off. Sure, having access to the right spices is half the battle, but in past experiments with an Indian cookbook, I’ve found that the spice ratio often seems off. For all the toasting and grinding of seeds called for, there’s never anywhere near the amount of flavor one expects, certainly nothing like the richness radiating from most Indian-restaurant dishes. (Of course, that might be the excess ghee speaking.) Or else, between the red chile powder and garam masala, I somehow wind up with so much heat that the dish is nearly inedible, even for a spice lover like me.

So why did I think I could have an Indian-food dinner party? While in Udaipur, Scott and I stayed at the friendly Hotel Krishna Niwas, where one of the owners, Sushma Khatri, runs cooking classes on pretty much anything you’d like to learn in Indian cuisine. At our request, she made us one of Rajasthan’s classic dishes, dal baati chorma; we ate it with relish and promptly signed up for a formal class. We wanted to cook some of our favorite dishes from North India: chole bhature, butter chicken, paratha. We ended up making all of those plus dal, chapati, and masala chai. In Sushma’s open kitchen, filled with easy-to-access spice bins and pre-pureed tomatoes, it all seemed so easy—and everything we made together was delicious, especially when eaten on the hotel’s roof, gazing out over Lake Pichola.

Fast-forward six months to our comparatively cramped kitchen in Queens, plastic spice bags scattered across the counter, pounds of onions and tomatoes sitting on the floor, one burner short of what we really needed—and the two of us, frantically chopping and measuring and hoping everyone would be at least 30 minutes late. The shopping part was easy, at least: We are fortunate to live two blocks from a terrific South Asian grocery store, stocked with all the mango powder and paneer we could ever want, and have a bunch of Indian sweets shops from which to buy dessert (and papri chips, it turned out).

Our menu was sourced directly from our own experiences in India. As appetizers, we chose two of our favorite chaats, or savory street-style snacks, and for the three main courses, we went with curried chickpeas (the chole minus the bhature, or fried bread that usually goes with it), butter paneer masala (like butter chicken, but with paneer, a soft Indian cheese), and baingan ka bharta (mashed eggplant, tomato, and onion). The first two main courses were recipes from Sushma in Udaipur (and dishes we’d eaten all over North India); the third dish I chose because I’d particularly liked the version of it we’d had in Agra. On the side were roti and naan—store- and restaurant-bought, admittedly—and although North India is all about mopping up curries with bread, we thought that fluffy basmati rice should be on the table too. I was tempted to make lassis and chapatis, and maybe some rasmalai for dessert, but thankfully my husband knows when to tell me I’m going too far.

Another thing to be thankful for: Nearly everyone was a bit late (and the two who showed up early were put straight to work), so I had time to finish the main dishes while Scott shook up Kashmir cocktails (see recipe). Then we remembered the appetizers and quickly put out the ingredients for papri chaat (pictured above)—our favorite chaat of them all, a crunchy, spicy, sweet, tangy party in your mouth—as well as a huge bowl of fruit chaat, essentially a fruit salad with an Indian dressing (I based ours on this recipe from Manjula’s Kitchen, using banana, apple, mango, cucumber, grapes, and pomegranate seeds—and, yes, you really do need the black salt).

Ultimately, I was astonished: Our friends seemed to like the food! It had flavor and depth without burning anyone’s insides. And though I’d made the chickpea dish before with excellent results (I’ll give that recipe in a future post), I wasn’t too surprised that the two biggest hits of the night were the papri chaat and the butter paneer masala. Once you manage to track down their myriad ingredients, these are two dishes you really can’t go wrong with—even if you’re not plying your guests with mango cocktails and IPAs.

PAPRI CHAAT

(adapted from The ABCD’s of Cooking)

Serves 12

4 cups papri chips

1 12 oz. can chickpeas

2 large potatoes, boiled and chopped

1 32 oz. container yogurt (preferably Indian style, like Desi Natural Dahi)

1 bottle tamarind chutney

1 bottle coriander chutney (we used Swad brand)

1 package sev (fried gram-flour noodles)

1 package chaat masala

1 white or yellow onion, chopped

1 tomato, chopped

Lime juice

Cilantro

Green chilies, minced

We emulated our local chaat shops and made these to order in a stainless-steel bowl, which meant setting all these ingredients out and, working in batches to make two or three servings at a time, mixing them together. Measurements per bowl were pretty inexact, but you can start with a handful of chips and about a tablespoon of everything else (less of the chaat masala and chilies). It’s the kind of dish you make to taste, depending on whether you prefer your chaat dry or wet (use more yogurt), spicy or mild. Rest assured that any way you mix these things together, it’s going to taste good.

 BUTTER PANEER MASALA

(adapted from Sushma Khatri’s cooking class at the Hotel Krishna Niwas, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India)

Serves 12 (we doubled the original recipe, more or less)

6 onions, chopped

2 tsp green chile, chopped

1 tsp. ginger

6 Tbsp. butter

1 tsp. turmeric powder

1 tsp. red chile powder

1 tsp. garam masala

Salt to taste

7 tomatoes, blanched, peeled, and pureed

3 Tbsp. double cream

12 almonds, ground

12 cashews, ground

4 Tbsp. coconut powder

1 lb. paneer, cut into 1-inch slabs (or large cubes)

2 cups milk (we did not double this from original recipe, as 2 cups seemed plenty)

Pinch fenugreek leaves, garam masala

Using a food processor, grind the onion, ginger, and green chile together, and then, in a large pan, cook in butter till light brown. Add turmeric, chile powder, garam masala, and salt; then slowly add tomato puree, a little at a time. Next, stir in cream, ground nuts, and coconut powder; continue to cook over high heat for a few minutes until oil pools around pan edges. Add paneer and milk, lower heat, and add fenugreek leaves and garam masala. Without mixing the last two spices in, cover the pan and simmer for five minutes. At that point, taste the dish—we found we had to add a bit more butter, salt, and fenugreek before it was perfect.

Have you met Eat Your World? Allow us to introduce ourselves in this one-minute video—and then scroll down the home page to see our newest content.

If you clicked through from the home page, see the column at left for the latest EYW Blog posts.

For those of you who came to know us during our beta phase, here’s the new stuff we launched in mid-December! Please let us know your feedback, including any bugs or issues you encounter, in the comment fields below.

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR

A Single Destinations Map: We’ve integrated the main EYW content map with the user maps, so we now have just one Destinations map. Not only is a single map more user-friendly than multiple maps, but this new system also allows us to better incorporate the helpful contributions of our talented users into the very same framework we utilize for EYW staff content. Therefore, if you’ve uploaded a food photo or written a Food Memory for us in the past, it is now attached by its location to this map. What does it mean for the site? One look at the map says it all: more content from around the world that’s easier to find.

User Profile Pages: You’ll also find your previous (and future) contributions on your user profile page. That’s right, when you sign up as an EYW user, you now have your own profile page, complete with avatar, all of your photos and stories to date, and easy-share social-media buttons. If you’re already a user, log in and you’ll be automatically directed to your page. Add your profile picture today!

New Content: The EYW team has been busy traveling and working on new content to guide you to the most typical regional foods and drinks around the world. We now have more than 425 entries representing local foods and drinks from 28 cities in 10 countries! Be sure to check out our newest sections on Delhi and London, and stay tuned for more coverage on the Florida Keys, Amsterdam, Prague, and Asheville, North Carolina. EYW’s exceptionally well-traveled users, meanwhile, have supplemented our featured content with descriptive regional-food photos and stories from some 15 additional U.S. states and 35 countries, from Missouri to Brazil to Sri Lanka. Our coverage grows daily!

Smaller, No-Less-Exciting Changes

• Every month, we’re choosing an EYW User of the Month—to highlight prolific users with quality contributions—as well as one Food Memory of the Month that we particularly enjoyed.

• Improvements to user experience: Users can now add multiple food photos from the same location with ease, and, from their profile pages, can edit their own food memories once they’ve been approved and are live on the site. When users contribute, they’ll receive an email notifying them when their content has been approved and is live on the site. And it’s now easy for users to share their site contributions on Facebook and Twitter.

• More videos! You’ve seen our short What is EYW? video in this post; stay tuned for lots more city-specific videos to appear on these pages.

• We’ve improved the EYW Blog, with the following new regular columns: Trips (travel-related stories), Recipes from Afar (recipes of foods we’ve encountered while traveling), Q&As (short interviews with local food producers around the world), Origins (explorations of where certain foods come from), and Photos (photo-related food or travel stories). Pitches are accepted at laura@eatyourworld. 

It was 1997 the last time I was on the Charles Bridge in Prague. I was a college student backpacking through Europe, and this moment of Dixieland jazz in the heart of Europe, pictured above, hit me strongly. I wasn't much of a photographer back then, but this is one of the few photos during that trip that actually told a good story and made me proud. When I started shooting professionally, I took the photo out, scanned it, and had the smudged, fingerprinted, black-and-white 4x6 sitting on my desk for years. When we started a Prague section on this site, I knew I wanted it to be a header.

Fast forward to October of this year: I'm back on the Charles Bridge. The same Dixieland jazz band was rocking, as the rain that had settled over the city finally let up. I took some more photos and enjoyed the beats, as I did when I was 21. When we got home we took a look at the two photos and realized the banjo player was the same—a bit older, but showing the same energy and love for his music, 14 years later. To think of how many times this man has been photographed playing these same songs amazes me. His smile tells the whole story.

Also, check out the video!

“I like to irrigate and cultivate. I like to farm. It’s like painting a picture: With a swipe of a brush you change the whole picture.” –Shane Milberger, owner of Milberger Farms, a chile pepper and vegetable farm with a roadside deli and produce stand

Tell us about your job.
I have 300 acres; of that, 40 acres are chile. We grow mild Anaheim, hot Anaheim, extra hot, Fresno, and the Mira Sol, also known as the Pueblo chile pepper.

This time of year [September] we’re packing chile, we’re harvesting. So I start the mornings off by going out to the shed and making sure everything’s ready to go, the guys are ready to pack, we go over what we’re packing and check what supplies they need. The chile roaster guys are out there roasting, I’m taking orders so I can call the field guys and tell them what they can go harvest, calling my buyers to see what I can sell today, taking care of all the issues on the farm and on my [roadside] stand, among several other things. It’s a very big managerial job right now.

What led you to your current position?
My dad sort of pushed me into it. It was my sophomore year in high school, and he didn’t want me out running around with my friends, so he got me into farming. My grandfather farmed for several people out here, and we had a large garden and animals, so I’d been around agriculture since I was three. 

Three years ago my son and wife wanted to do a roadside stand, so we took over this building here. The first year it was only produce, then last year my sister got involved. She wanted to do the deli and food service. We don’t do a lot of advertising, but we’re doing well.

What’s your favorite part of the job?
My favorite part is when I can go out and get a little solitude. I like to irrigate and cultivate. I like to farm. Whatever you do to the ground when you till it, it refreshes it. It’s like painting a picture. With a swipe of a brush you change the whole picture. You drag a disc over the ground; it stirs the ground up and brings up fresh soil and changes it. It gives you a little self-pride when you can look at a field and plow it, and you smell the fresh soil—that’s why we do it.

How do chiles fit into the culinary landscape of Pueblo?
Everything in Pueblo has something to do with chile. You can go to the knickknack shops down on Union Street, and every one of them will have something to do with chile, be it a chile apron, a chile shirt, a chile necklace, chile pens. Every restaurant in town serves chile in some way.

In our store here we make goat cheese with chiles; we have breads—more than half of our sandwiches in the deli have chile on them. Chile is a very large part of Pueblo. And of course, there’s the annual Chile & Frijoles Festival.

We had some delicious chile dishes there—ice cream with pepper fudge sauce, a pepper wrap with the Pueblo chile. What’s your favorite way to eat chiles?
With olive oil and garlic, a little salt and pepper, and a fresh piece of bread.

Is there any other food you’d recommend a visitor try while in Pueblo?
Another Pueblo food is the slopper [a burger covered with chili verde, a green chile stew], but of course that’s made with green chile. There’s also the grinder, an Italian sausage sandwich.

What do you think is the future of food and drink for Pueblo?
More chile! I do some processing and sell to restaurants, and my business is growing. They’re putting the chile in salsas and ketchups, and they’re becoming more popular versus the more well-known Hatch chiles from New Mexico.

What’s the difference between your chiles and New Mexico’s Hatch chiles?
It’s like night and day. They have a lot of hot days down there. The peppers don’t beef up as much as they do here, because we have the cool nights. Hatch is well known for what they do because they are so big down there. The average Hatch farmer has probably 400 acres of just chile. The average farmer up here doesn’t have 400 acres.

On EYW, we ask members to share short food memories related to travel, a favorite meal, growing up--anything. Can you share a brief food memory with our readers?
My favorite food memory is something simple that I grew up with: fried potato, pinto beans, and chili [verde]. In fact, we had it two nights ago for supper. We throw it all together: the beans on top of the potatoes, then the chili on top of that—and maybe a little cheese.

For more on these distinct Colorado chiles, see Origins: Pueblo Chile.

It’s hard to find a restaurant in Pueblo, Colorado, that doesn’t serve green chiles. This is prime pepper country, a smaller—and, some would argue, tastier—alternative to Hatch, New Mexico.

In autumn, at harvest time, the scent of roasting chiles wafts from roadside stands, supermarkets, and the annual Loaf ’N Jug Chile and Frijole Festival, which I was lucky enough to catch this September. (Among pepper enthusiasts, the preferred spelling of the capsicum fruit is chile. The dish containing meat, chile, and vegetables, like the one we tried in Denver, is chili.)

The chiles are roasted over an open flame in rotating black-wire drums, and then hosed down in a cloud of steam. It’s hypnotizing to watch, but will sear your eyes if you get too close.

At the festival, I ask a farmer what made this area so special for pepper growing. “The cool nights are what create the thickness and that meat in our chiles,” says Shane Milberger, the owner of Milberger Farms, one of the establishments that lie just east of Pueblo on the St. Charles Mesa, a 17-mile stretch along the Arkansas River Valley. [See EYW’s Q&A with Shane here.]

Like many farmers here, Milberger grows a variety of peppers: mild and hot Anaheim, Fresno, and extra hot. But he’s most proud of the Pueblo chile, also known as the Mira Sol (“looking at the sun” in Spanish) because it grows upward. “It has the most flavor,” he says.

The pepper packs a fair punch—between 5,000 and 20,000 Scoville Heat Units, the measurement method used to rank chile heat. That’s comparable to a moderate jalapeño pepper. At the festival, I try a chile wrap, a tortilla layered with roasted Pueblo chile, cheese, and beans. It’s hot enough to make my nose run, but that didn’t keep me from polishing the whole thing off.

After all, it’s not every day I get to eat a Pueblo chile. The pepper is unique to the Mesa. No one quite knows where the first plant came from, but around 1912 an Italian immigrant was the first farmer to grow the chile. It remained largely confined to ethnic communities until the 1970s, when Mexican food became a mainstream hit.

In the 1980s and ’90s, as Pueblo’s steel industry collapsed, the community redefined itself through the Pueblo chile. In 1995, the chamber of commerce held the first Chile and Frijole Festival. Pete Giadone was the only farmer who brought chiles that year, and he sold out to the 5,000 attendees. Other growers liked what they saw and began converting their fields to chiles. But most of them lacked a key marketing item: a roaster. Chiles need to be roasted before they can be frozen, an essential process for extending the lifetime of the product beyond a few days.  

Giadone began making and selling roasters for $1,000 a piece to area farmers, and by 1999 a dozen farmers were roasting chiles from sunup to sundown for three days before the festival. Some 25,000 people showed up that year.

Aficionados use Pueblo chiles in salsa and chili verde (green chile stew), on nachos and pizza, in pasta, and for the most classic Pueblo dish: the slopper, a hamburger swimming in chili verde and topped with chopped onions (pictured above). I even try some goat cheese studded with Pueblo chiles from Milberger Farms.

Farmers in other areas have tried to grow the Pueblo chile, but nowhere else has the same combination of hot days, cool nights, sandy loam soil, and abundant irrigation water. These days the festival draws 100,000 people from all over the U.S. to a rejuvenated historical district and river walk. The transformation of Pueblo’s identity from gritty steel town to heritage tourist destination is complete. To which I say: Keep the antacid handy. I’ll be back.

You can visit Milberger Farms and other farms on Highway 50 East, heading out of Pueblo. Or check out the next annual Chile and Frijole Festival, which is always held the last weekend in September.

In this new EYW Blog series, our writers will feature recipes of dishes they’ve encountered while away and re-created at home. 

A few gluttonous days in New Orleans are hard to beat, but while you can’t bring home the city’s soulful live music or lighthearted survivor spirit, you can at least attempt to make some of its classic foods in the daiquiri-free confines of your own kitchen. After my last trip to NOLA, I spent a week back in New York dreaming about beignets and BBQ shrimp before my husband and I got our acts together, invited some friends over, and set up a Sazerac bar. We were having a NOLA dinner party, damn it!

My mind wandered to what’s quick and delicious, and landed on the simple yet memorable crawfish étouffée—the version we ate at dive bar Coop’s Place [pictured below] on our last day in New Orleans was one of our favorite meals of the trip. For this traditional Cajun dish, crawfish tail meat is “smothered” in a rich, spicy brown stew of vegetables, butter, and Cajun spices, then served over rice. It struck us as the perfect main course for a party of 10—more unusual than other New Orleans classics, like gumbo or jambalaya, but still relatively easy to make.

Inside Manhattan’s Chelsea Market, I tracked down some crawfish as well as two Louisiana sausages, smoky andouille and earthy boudin blanc (pork with liver and often heart, plus rice). Unfortunately, the crawfish was frozen and from Spain, but it’d do the trick (shrimp can also be substituted).

I used an étouffée recipe from famed New Orleans chef, Emeril Lagasse. Specifically, it was the recipe Emeril demonstrated on The Martha Stewart Show—and I must admit, the visual (video) aid actually came in handy. I’ve edited the recipe below just slightly to better reflect what is shown in the video. Note that while it is traditionally Cajun, crawfish étouffée is popular in Creole cooking as well; the inclusion of tomatoes in the recipe I used makes it more a Creole version.

Because we had a large group—and everyone likes to eat a lot—we doubled this recipe with no problems (two pounds of crawfish still sufficed). It turned out so delicious we had very little left over.

During the party, we served the grilled andouille and boudin sausages—you steam the latter for about 10-15 minutes, then remove the thin casing and squeeze some lemon on it—with spicy Creole mustard and French bread as scene-setting appetizers, alongside a centerpiece fashioned from Mardi Gras beads and a souvenir voodoo doll (couldn’t resist). And to drink? It can only be Sazeracs—a little Herbsaint or absinthe to coat the glass, Peychaud’s bitters, rye whiskey, simple syrup, lemon peel (recipe). Our group found them exceedingly easy to drink.

Serves 8

6 Tbsp. unsalted butter

4 Tbsp. all-purpose flour

2 cups chopped onions

1/2 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper

2 bay leaves

2 sprigs fresh thyme

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 1/2 cups shrimp stock

1 cup peeled, seeded and diced tomatoes

1 tsp coarse salt

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Hot sauce, like Tabasco, to taste

2 lbs crawfish tails, with the fat (or substitute shrimp, if you must)

2 tsp Emeril’s Original Essence (or make your own)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 cup chopped scallions

1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

Hot cooked white rice, for serving

Directions

1. In a large, heavy saucepan, melt 4 Tbsp of butter over medium heat. Make a roux by adding the flour slowly and whisking to combine. Continue to cook, stirring constantly, until roux is the color of peanut butter. (Do this for a good couple of minutes, being careful not to burn the butter.)

2. Add onions, celery, bell pepper, bay leaves, and thyme. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables have softened, 6-8 minutes. (They will appear dry—that’s okay.) Stir in garlic; let cook for a minute. Add stock, tomatoes, salt, cayenne, Worcestershire sauce, and Tabasco; bring to a boil. Skim surface, reduce heat, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.

3. In a medium bowl, toss together crawfish tails (and any crawfish fat) and the Essence, and add to the simmering sauce along with the lemon juice, scallions, and parsley. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Add remaining 2 Tbsp butter; stir to combine. Serve over rice.

A version of this article originally appeared on Foodists.ca.

“Detroit, being the great melting pot that it is, will continue to shine in its diverse food offerings.” –Sy Ginsberg, co-owner, United Meat & Deli
 

Tell us about your job.
I oversee the processing of our products at United Meat & Deli; I handle the development of new products; I’m in charge of procuring raw materials and ingredients; and I handle much of our national sales.

Another one of my jobs is “deli consultant.” This is my favorite: Since I’ve been involved in the Jewish-style deli business for more than 50 years, I offer assistance to future [deli owners], helping them set up their deli, plan the menu, train, and generally get it off the ground. I do not charge for my time—I love doing this, and it usually helps to establish long-term friendships and business relationships.

What led you to your current position?
I started working at age 15 in a neighborhood deli in Detroit. At age 23, instead of finishing school, I became an entrepreneur, owning my own little deli. After a few years, I wanted something bigger and better, so I built a new deli with 150 seats: The Pickle Barrel Deli, in Southfield, Michigan. We did very well there, but it burned me out. I sold my interest five years later and got involved in the wholesale and distribution side of the business. This evolved into the creation of my own brand of products, which I still process and sell all around the country.

We loved the sandwich [pictured above], made with Sy Ginsberg corned beef, that we had at Russell Street Deli. How would you say your product (corned beef in particular) fits into the culinary landscape of Detroit?
Corned beef is, of course, very popular in the Jewish-style delis, and has been for as long as I can remember.  Now it’s become a very popular item in the inner city. Corned beef is a favorite food of the African-American trade in Detroit and Cleveland. Almost every diner, tavern, or family-style restaurant in the nation will have a Reuben sandwich on the menu.

How does Detroit’s corned beef compare to New York’s?
I think the Midwest flavor profile is far superior. While New York-style pastrami is great (we also produce this), I feel its corned beef is mostly very bland.

Them’s fighting words! Name one iconic food in Detroit that a visitor cannot miss.
A sandwich of corned beef, coleslaw, and Russian dressing on double-baked rye tops my list, followed closely by the Detroit-version Coney dog with our Detroit-style chili, yellow mustard, and chopped onion. And you can’t leave out Faygo Red Pop and Vernor’s ginger ale.

Eat Your World focuses a lot on a city’s historic and traditional foods. What do you think is the future of food/drink in Detroit?
It’s hard to talk about the future of food, since people are so transient. Mobility is a great thing. With metro Detroit’s burgeoning Middle Eastern population, I’ve become a huge fan of Arabic food. The same thing happened 15 or 20 years ago, when I was introduced to Greek food here. Fifty years ago you had to drive around to find a pizzeria; now there are two or three at every intersection—especially since Little Caesars and Dominos were founded in the Detroit area. Detroit, being the great melting pot that it is, will continue to shine in its diverse food offerings.

On EYW, we ask users to share short food memories related to travel, a favorite meal, growing up—anything. Can you share a brief food memory with our readers?
I feel especially fortunate that I’ve been able to travel and experience so many different cultures, and their food. I love going to the appetizing shops in New York: Zabar’s, Dean & DeLuca, and Russ & Daughters are great places. Places like Yonah Schimmel’s knish factory and the sidewalk pickle vendors are so fascinating. Farmers markets are great.  The seafood markets in Seattle are fun. Visiting market places in Italy or Russia or Turkey or anyplace else, where people go shopping daily and bargain with the vendors for their dinner ingredients, is so cool to experience. Our world is so diverse and it is wonderful to be able to experience its diversity.

We often feel like we’re on a scavenger hunt when we travel for EYW. Sometimes we have just three days in a city to find all the foods we’ve researched, come up with good alternatives, entertain new ideas suggested by locals we meet, identify suitable “burn it off” locations. Despite the inevitable last-day dash around said city to tie up loose ends, we’ve become super efficient at these tasks. But doing it in, say, Boston and doing it in Agra, a garbage-strewn Indian city congested with all manner of human and animal traffic, are two very different things.

Last weekend, we arrived in Agra around 4:45pm after the 4.5-hour ride from Delhi, tired but hungry and eager to get started on our to-do list. We’d already encountered a few obstacles—the honking fiend of a driver arranged for us by Scott’s company couldn’t speak English and didn’t know his way around Agra at all. I’d assumed we’d use tuk-tuks to get around in town, but it didn’t make sense to pay a series of drivers when we were already paying for one for the weekend. One who came with some air-conditioned respite from the 105-degree heat. So despite being generally anti-guide, we had to hire one in Agra. As a bonus, he’d take us around the Taj Mahal in the morning. (That is, of course, why anyone ever comes to Agra in the first place.)

The guide, Danish, sat up front with our driver, Brijesh, and did a double take at the Google map I’d passed him. “Bhagat Halwai? You want to go to Bhagat Halwai?” he asked, incredulous. Indeed we did; I’d heard that was the best place for chaat around here. “Never in my six years of guiding has anyone asked to go there,” he told us. He turned to the task of directing Brijesh through the unruly streets of Agra. After a while we left the main highway for a dense interior lane that Danish introduced as a “short route.” We were promptly stuck behind a line of giant water buffalo.

The area, called Belanganj, was teeming with people on bikes, on foot, in tuk-tuks and bicycle rickshaws, on motorbikes and donkey-pulled wagons. Typical of what we’d seen of India thus far, the street was a free-for-all, traffic-wise: No unspoken “drive on the left” rule was in effect; swerving and plentiful honking were all but encouraged. One of the few dummies taking an automobile down this road, we might as well have had “wide load” plastered on our small sedan. We inched forward, past the rooftop monkeys and wandering goats and open-air food stalls, all the while doubting that any of our potential future readers would actually retrace these steps. (Dear potential future readers: Take a tuk-tuk! With an English-speaking driver! It will be easier.)

Finally, we hit the main M.G. Road and arrived at the chaat shop. We entered the air-conditioned confectioners half of Bhagat Halwai first, where our inquiries for chaat were met with totally blank faces and smiles. Danish to the rescue. The staff pointed us across the street, to the outdoor “food court.” So much for the cool air.

We scanned the menu and settled on bhalla, as the potato-and-chickpea patties were being freshly fried at that very moment. Rule no. 1 of street-eating in India: Make sure it’s fresh. Rule no. 2: Avoid raw unpeeled vegetables, of which this dish had none. What it did have was grated ginger and a spicy-sweet brown sauce that made us instantly happy and forgetful of the day’s headaches.

We had more to do, so settled on the one chaat (plus, the samosa guy was still forming the samosas, so no luck on that front). Back in the car, the discussion turned to parathas, North India’s beloved fried and usually stuffed breads. Agra has a famous vendor, Rambabu. Of course Danish knew it. But he said the original was back in “dangerous,” crowded Belanganj, and suggested we go to the branch near the Agra-Delhi highway, perhaps on our way home the next day. Nice try, Danish: We wanted the real-deal original. Back into the fray we went.

Rambabu’s parathas were greasy but good, and we assured our weary companions we had just one more quick stop—for Agra’s famed petha and dalmoth, both available from a sweets shop—before they were done for the night. Of course nothing is really “quick” in a city like this, so it was another hour-plus before we’d actually made it to the shop, attempted (unsuccessfully, for once) to haggle on prices, and walked out with two boxes of goods, to be photographed later. In truth, we were eager to cut them loose so we could go to Taj Ganj—the bustling area around the Taj Mahal, known for its rooftop hotels and restaurants, shops and touts—and get a beer and a quick glimpse of the Taj before the sun went down. We made it there, sans our crew, just before the sky went dark. Finally relaxing with Kingfishers and a sweet view, we decided to walk a bit, which is when we met a local jeweler named Arif. Arif sold me a pretty purple ring and gave us an enthusiastic recommendation for Mughlai food—the traditional cuisine of Agra, courtesy of the Islamic Mughal empire that ruled North India between the 16th and 19th centuries—the following day, for a restaurant I hadn’t encountered in my research. It sounded perfect.

Next day we had a late start (the driver overslept), but still arrived early enough to the Taj Mahal to beat the crowds and enjoy a semi-cool breeze. Danish got to exercise his passion for actual tourist-guiding between Agra’s two stunning Mughal monuments that morning: the Taj and the Agra Fort. In between, around 9am, we set off on another wild goose chase for the typical Agra breakfast: bedai and jalebi, a spicy potato-curry-and-fried bread affair followed up by a sugary, sticky-sweet dessert (the latter is pictured below). All for breakfast! It’s the kind of oddball, delicious pairing—sold on a busy street corner thronged by hungry locals—that makes me love this country.

Everyone satiated, we piled back into the car and over to Agra Fort for a few more hours of sightseeing. We asked Danish if he enjoyed the “tour” he’d been giving us, and he said yes. “I don’t think I’ll ever guide anybody again like you two,” he told us. Probably safe to assume, yes.

When the heat became unbearable we left, bidding farewell to Danish only after he gave Brijesh explicit directions on where to drive next: Sadar Bazaar, home to several Mughlai restaurants, including the one Arif had suggested. We had one meal to go, a proper North Indian curry and bread kind of meal. We were back in the car to Delhi by 12:45pm, our tummies full and eyes wide at all we’d seen and done—and we were stuck in traffic.

Our London EYW section—some 40-plus traditional foods and drinks in England’s fabulous capital—is under construction while we travel to India, but you can read about our absolute favorite Brit dining experience, at the new, historic-food-focused Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, over at Foodists.ca. (Pictured is the clever meat fruit, a dreamy, mousse-like chicken-liver parfait dipped in mandarin gelatin, inspired by the cheeky medieval English tradition of serving “illusion fruit” at dinner parties.) Stay tuned this summer for both London and New Delhi coverage!

When I was asked to meet up with some clients in Detroit, I had a feeling a weekend of EYW coverage would lead to some very good things. It was just a few years ago that I had quickly visited Greektown and experienced the famous "flaming cheese." I knew there had to be much more than that, and was determined to convince Laura to make it a serious destination for us. With some trepidation, she began to research Detroit's foods, and slowly a list of musts became apparent that sold us both to the idea.

When you mention Detroit to anyone, you get a "why would you want to go there?" look immediately. The city has clearly lost its luster over the last god-knows-how-many years, and has earned a reputation as a desolate urban graveyard. And yes, when you travel throughout the city, it is just that: Boarded-up factories are abundant; once-glorious run-down houses and buildings (like the iconic Michigan Central Station, above) are ubiquitous on almost every stretch of the city proper. I couldn't help but think of New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward around every corner. It is visually horrific and photographically brilliant in a sick and twisted way.

But what makes our job so incredible is that we put together itineraries that focus on the best of what a city like Detroit has to offer. Because of this, we're able to unravel the heart and soul of a place, even when it's hard to see on the surface. Detroit has this heart and soul. Born-and-bred locals can drive down any street and remember details of the Motown era's storefronts, and happily dine at old-school institutions like Buddy's and Bates, relishing in their personal historical significance. The ethnic groups of Poland, Greece, and the Middle East (among others) still have their pockets, and the food and traditions that go with them. On a cold winter's day, we were shocked to see Detroit's enormous Eastern Market, demonstrating the freshness of vegetables, eggs, breads, and sausages that are not only sold to shoppers, but are also used in restaurant kitchens across the city. (It seems Detroit has had a locavore movement for years, but doesn't feel the need to hit you over the head with it.)

What makes Detroit special to me, however, are the people we met during our eating and drinking journey. The locals who haven't fled despite the economic hardships; people who are warm and friendly, realistic and proud; bar companions who've suffered and have seen suffering, yet over a delicious local beer will laugh and tell you about neighborhoods showing new signs of life. In a city where you light cheese on fire with a jubulant "OPA!" it's not hard to push through and continue to feel its strong beating heart.

Last weekend I finally attended one of Jeff Orlick’s (a.k.a. Jeffrey Tastes’s) Ambassador Program events, in which one person acts as expert of a cuisine (and, often, culture) and leads a meal for a small group in a NYC restaurant of their choice. Held at Tori Shin uptown and led by Japanese native Yasushi Sasaki, this event revolved around yakitori, or grilled chicken skewers—a more upscale take on the popular street snack than what I’d previously been exposed to along St. Marks Place, this time involving organic birds from Pennsylvania—and I hastened to participate, as Scott and I were feverishly researching our own trip to Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto next month. This was one day after the devastating 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, before the nuclear fears reached their apex.

The meal included a demonstration by Tori Shin’s affable chefs, who skillfully sliced the chickens and formed the skewers, each of which highlights a particular part of the bird: the breast, thigh, neck, wing, skin, liver, heart, gizzard, knee cartilage—nothing goes to waste here. It turns out there are some 40 different varieties of yakitori possible, including vegetable options (like the skewered salty shishitou peppers we tasted). Watching the butchers’ precise and practiced cuts called to mind the expert skills of a sushi chef.

Between sips of Sakura Emaki, a sweet springtime sake, my fellow diners and I were treated to eight different yakitori, most of which were basted with a seaweed-infused sake before getting charcoal-grilled. While I enjoyed the moist shisomaki (breast with shiso) and the popular kashiwa (breast and thigh meat mix), those were quickly overshadowed by the more interesting tsukune (chicken meatballs), juicy bonjiri (chicken tail/butt), and crispy-fatty kawa (skin), which I ordered separately. What a joy, though, to be served with such pride, to receive one skewer every eight minutes or so and savor each bite as it comes. As a bonus, I was learning so much about yakitori—just one of the many foods we intend to cover for EYW in Japan next month, but an important one. I left with the name of a recommended yakitori restaurant in Tokyo scrawled on the back of a Tori Shin card, a gift from a waiter.

Except a few days later, after much thought, we decided we had to postpone our trip. The radiation fears, the supply shortages, the potential food contamination— although each of my Tokyo contacts has assured me via email that Japan will bounce back quickly, it’s simply not a good time to embark on a self-styled culinary tour of the country. The Japanese are strong, but badly scarred; they are rightfully proud of their gastronomy and traditions, but how can we ask them to embrace us and our mission at this time? It’s too soon, too uncertain.

So we are setting aside our airline vouchers to fly to Japan in the fall—ideally in October, when the country’s maple trees are aglow and nuclear fears surely a thing of the past. As the Japanese say, nanakorobi yaoki: Fall down seven times, stand up eight. The rising sun will always rise again. Until then, our thoughts are with Japan for a speedy recovery. 

The New York City craft beer scene has exploded in recent years, but with a grand total of five breweries/brewpubs within city limits, we’re still a bit behind on the production front when compared to other U.S. cities like Philadelphia, Portland, Denver, and Austin, where it seems a new brewery opens every other week. (Fortunately, NYC fares better with craft beer bars.) But I have new hope for the future of New York beers after attending Brooklyn Wort, a biannual home-brew competition that packed 30 local brewers into the Gowanus Studio Space yesterday.

Scott and I were there primarily to support friends and event sponsors Valley Malt, a small Massachusetts-based start-up changing brewing in the Northeast for the better with its artisanal malt made from locally grown grains. We’re huge supporters of American craft beer as well, of course, but having found the beer in more than a few one-off brewpubs around the country just so-so, we had admittedly lowered expectations for a room full of home-brewed beer. Apologies, New York brewers: We seriously underestimated you.  

Among the complexly flavored offerings on hand were a terrific golden hibiscus ale (from brewer Christopher Lehault), a Belgian strong chocolate ale (Carlos Varas), an American barley wine (Simon Tepas), a few good American IPAs. Most unexpected, perhaps, was Andrew Maiorana’s black pepper brown ale, which tasted pleasingly like what it sounds like. Many of the brewers were from Brooklyn—especially from Park Slope, which makes sense given its glorious trifecta of Brooklyn Homebrew, Bierkraft, and Beer Table, among other great area bars—but I also met some promising Staten Island brewers, a guy from my own borough of Queens, a brewer working to open a new microbrewery near the Jersey Shore.

As I made the rounds with tulip glass in hand, I couldn’t help but wonder which of these home-brewing guys/gals might be the next distributing brewery to join Eat Your World’s NYC roundup. But while some of the brewers I spoke to had professional aspirations—here’s hoping for a future Squirrel Tail brewpub in Brooklyn—others simply do it out of passion and fun. Nearly all of them lamented the difficulty of going pro in New York, citing astronomical costs and lack of space, which would certainly help explain New York’s slower brewery growth compared to smaller, cheaper cities.

They may not have the space or funds just yet, but maybe, just maybe, one of these talented home brewers will find a way to break into our city’s brewing scene and give Garrett Oliver a run for his money (might we suggest a “Queens Brewery”?). In the meantime, a Saturday spent tasting fresh handcrafted beer is never a bad thing. And when it’s really good beer? Now that’s a great Saturday.

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than a year since Scott and I first hatched the Eat Your World idea, while traveling around Colombia. Since then there’s been a lot of blood, sweat, and tears—and unexpected delays—but we’re proud to be where we are now. This week we soft-launched to a large group of friends and family, our public soft launch is just around the corner, and, with editorial food-and-drink coverage for 19 cities from 13 different states/provinces/countries, the site is really coming along. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Of course, there’s much more on the way: We’ve done a lot of domestic traveling this year, and I’m still playing catch-up on the writing front. Soon we’ll have sections for Austin, Los Angeles, Denver, and Boston, with lots more EYW snapshots coming too. In early 2011 we’re planning to expand our international coverage, with extended trips to either India or parts of Europe—or hopefully both!

The year has been challenging yet exhilarating, and we are super excited for what’s to come. We hope you too are greeting 2011 with a positive, enthusiastic outlook. From the small EYW staff in New York: Happy holidays, and may your new year be filled with delicious exploration.

Cranberries. I don’t think of them too often, unless I’m throwing a handful of dried ones into my salad. Or, you know, it’s this time of year, when cranberry sauce makes its annual appearance in the Thanksgiving spread. But cranberries are an important fruit to the U.S., not only because of their more recently publicized “superfruit” antioxidant qualities, but because they’re one of the few fruits that originated on North American soil. They were a staple in the diets of Native Americans, who passed along the wild fruit’s benefits to the Pilgrims when they arrived in the early 1600s. Cultivation of the berries began on Cape Cod in 1816; commercial harvesting followed in 1847. Today, southeastern Massachusetts has more than 14,000 acres of cranberry bogs—some 900 bogs—and trails only Wisconsin in production of the fruit in the U.S. (New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington also produce cranberries, though in much smaller numbers.)

A few weeks ago in Cape Cod, we had the good fortune to witness a cranberry harvest, which happens every fall when the fruits reach their peak flavor and crimson color. We’d been in town for a mid-October wedding and had no idea it was harvest season until a local friend mentioned it. Scott and I are frequent visitors to the Cape and are familiar with the area’s many cranberry bogs, but we usually visit in summer, when they look like nothing more than dry, low-lying, shrub-covered fields. For the harvest, however, the soft, marshy bogs are flooded with up to 18 inches of water; water-reel harvesters are used to loosen the berries from their vines; and—the cool part—the berries, which contain pockets of air, float to the surface, where they’re corralled and loaded onto trucks.  

You can often observe a cranberry harvest from the road, as was the case at the Coonamessett bog—a bog first developed in 1890—we passed off of John Parker Road in Falmouth. Driving around a bend, we suddenly glimpsed a scarlet carpet of cranberries floating atop an ephemeral lake, glistening in the sun—a glorious vision only seen a handful of days a year. That this harvest coincides yearly with the multicolored fall foliage typical of the Northeast is almost unfair to the rest of the country.

We pulled over, walked around, picked up some floating berries at the bog’s perimeter, even ate a few—not really recommended, as they’re bitingly tart. The guys in waders and on machines waved and went about their business, oblivious (or accustomed) to our picture-taking, surrounded by the berries that would perhaps soon meet their fate in Ocean Spray packaging around the world—or on my own dinner table at Thanksgiving. Here, it all begins.

It was such a relief last week to find out the local Queens farmers market has been changed to year round. With only a week left to Thanksgiving, we usually are stocking up on the turkey meat and sausage that we will freeze and use throughout the winter. We have previously made good use of that system, but not getting seasonal vegetables has been the hard part. “Do we really have to go to Trade Fair [our overcrowded supermarket] for produce?” This is a common question we repeat throughout the cold months. “I miss the farmers market,” with a sad face, is another generic overused statement during the dark days of January and February.

We have become so accustomed to our Sunday walk around the block, into the heart of the Jackson Heights historical district. It is nice to walk in the opposite direction from our usual path to the train and remember this is our neighborhood too. It’s the part that feels more like a neighborhood: manicured landscaping, endless rows of trees, families coming and going. There are no stores, no subways, and hardly a spatter of garbage. As we approach the market from across the street, we start planning how we are going to tackle the vendors in the most efficient manner. “Should we start from the near side, or work our way back from the mushroom guy?” “Are we actually going to spend all that money on mushrooms?” These questions have become such a part of our weekly routine. And they are some of my favorite questions to ask. Then there’s the inevitable, “What are we going to have for dinner tonight, and tomorrow?” “Do we want fish?” “What would make good sides?” And you can’t forget, “What can we make that will last two days?”

As we go through the stands, we carefully choose our vegetables and purchase whatever fruit is available for our morning bowls of cereal. If we see eggs, we will pick those up, and of course the juice guys are a weekly pilgrimage. No more Tropicana for us! This year there are some newbies: grass-fed beef and local cheese, even Long Island wine. We pass those stands quickly, knowing we must budget and spend wisely.

As December approaches, we are anticipating less of our favorite vendors to show up. And through January there may be just a few who will brave the cold. But we will be there to support the farmers and fill up our kitchen with all the local produce and meats and eggs we can. And if no one shows up, we know we can at least walk in the other direction and get a cheap taco or tamal on Roosevelt Avenue.

It’s dangerous to write about food on an empty stomach.

This past week, as we scramble to get more content up on the site in anticipation of a soft launch, I find myself craving foods I ate last weekend or even several months ago: a fried whole Caribbean fish, a particular hot dog, a pasta dish. How can I not when rereading notes and calling to mind said hot dog’s crisp snap and tangy onion sauce? How can I possibly research the history of local NYC breweries and not want a cold beer? At 3pm, no less.

Today was the most torturous, though, as I revisited the buttery, cheesy, meaty egg pastas of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna, the northern region considered by many to be Italy’s culinary capital. Just the thought of the butter-and-sage-soaked tortelloni of Bologna had me cursing my healthy veggie burger lunch and searching for the best Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, my corner of Queens—just about equally dominated by South and Southeast Asians and South Americans—is not exactly celebrated for its regional Italian food, and though I knew the restaurant a block away makes a decent tortellini en brodo, I also knew the tortellini were not homemade a la Italia. And while the wine shop down the street carries a good Lambrusco, ideally I’d drink it while snacking on a plate of creamy prosciutto di Parma…which I was unlikely to find around here.

Why couldn’t I be writing about something my ’hood has in spades, like Colombian arepas or South Indian dosas, this week? 

As I saw it, my options were to ride the subway to Soho to try Michael White’s new Emilia-Romagna-inspired Osteria Morini, or else suck it up and pair my fizzy, Queens-bought Lambrusco with…super spicy Thai food. A sommelier probably wouldn’t approve, but at least one of my Italian cravings was satisfied—for now.