I
am hereby outlawing the Republican and Democrat parties...gone forever. Well,
let's get rid of the Constitution too (ouch, that one hurts). The whole system of
politics is wiped away. Here is the good news. You get to design a new
political party or system or Constitution or way of thinking about political
culture. You can be in charge, if you would like. What will you do? What would your system look like?
Monday, April 29, 2013
WEEK FIVE READING (ACTUALLY, WEEK FIVE WATCHING)
For your reading this week, read this video…well, watch this
video. It should be thought-provoking. Hopefully, there are a couple of spots
that bother you and make you somewhat angry. But it should also make you think.
WEEK FIVE WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ (ACTUALLY, WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU WATCHED)
For your response this week, you have a couple of options:
1. For you, what explains people's political choices? Building on what the presenter has claimed, think about the origin of your own political decisions and your own stance on candidates and issues. What has driven you to make those choices?
--or--
2. Choose one of the presenter's assertions and discuss.
--or--
3. Choose one of the presenter's assertions and disagree with it.
1. For you, what explains people's political choices? Building on what the presenter has claimed, think about the origin of your own political decisions and your own stance on candidates and issues. What has driven you to make those choices?
--or--
2. Choose one of the presenter's assertions and discuss.
--or--
3. Choose one of the presenter's assertions and disagree with it.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
WEEK FOUR BLOG ENTRY
There are two possibilities for what you write this week:
1. When and how did your family come to be in the United States?
2. If you have no idea or would simply prefer not to discuss this, try this one: is the melting pot still a good symbol for the United States? Why or why not? If not, what is a better analogy? A salad bowl? A stir fry? A chipotle burrito with an In and Out burger stuffed inside? Something else? Or is this nation still best described as a melting pot?
1. When and how did your family come to be in the United States?
2. If you have no idea or would simply prefer not to discuss this, try this one: is the melting pot still a good symbol for the United States? Why or why not? If not, what is a better analogy? A salad bowl? A stir fry? A chipotle burrito with an In and Out burger stuffed inside? Something else? Or is this nation still best described as a melting pot?
WEEK FOUR READING
For this week, I offer you a review of the book that we are starting to read, Tortilla Curtain.
--------------------------------------------------
The Pilgrim of Topanga Creek Date: September 3, 1995,
Sunday, Late Edition - Final
Byline: By Scott Spencer;
Lead:
THE TORTILLA CURTAIN By T. Coraghessan Boyle. VIKING has somehow got the idea it has another "Grapes of Wrath" on its hands. Then again, T. Coraghessan Boyle may have contributed to the delusion by using a few lines from Steinbeck's novel as the epigraph to his own meditation on the dispossessed and the American dream, California style. But while Steinbeck's tale of the Joad family was the very apotheosis of the proletarian novel, with its almost surreal emotional clarity and passages of nearly overpowering pathos, "The Tortilla Curtain" is, as the dust jacket would have it, about "the Okies of the 1990's." This apparently means that the narrative contains no real heroes or villains, and that the suddenly old-fashioned hopefulness of Steinbeck's book is nowhere to be found. In "The Tortilla Curtain," Mr. Boyle deftly portrays Los Angeles's Topanga Canyon, catching both its privileged society and its underlying geological and ecological instability. But while the book has heft, its story is slight, and not unfamiliar: An undocumented Mexican couple struggle for survival in the interstices of society and in the canyon itself, even as an affluent Anglo couple live their fearful, selfish existence behind the dubious protection of a walled development called Arroyo Blanco Estates. We first meet Candido Rincon when he is hit by a car driven by the male half of the novel's Anglo couple, a self-styled Annie Dillard disciple named Delaney Mossbacher. Candido is in California with his young pregnant wife, America, having recently braved another crossing of the border. Candido and America are part of California's unacknowledged work force, cogs in the vast human machine that does the state's brute labor and without whom (Proposition 187 to the contrary) the state could probably not survive. Mr. Boyle is first-rate in capturing the terror of looking for work in an alien society, as in this passage describing Candido's experience at a parking-lot labor exchange: "The contractors began to arrive, the white men with their big bleached faces and soulless eyes, enthroned in their trucks. They wanted two men or three, they wanted four or five, no questions asked, no wage stipulated, no conditions or terms of employment. A man could be pouring concrete one day, spraying pesticide the next -- or swabbing out urinals, spreading manure, painting, weeding, hauling, laying brick or setting tile. You didn't ask questions. You got in the back of the truck and you went where they took you." Mr. Boyle is convincing, and even stirring, in his telling of Candido and America's story, bringing to it an agitprop artist's perspective on both society's injustices and the cold implacability of the privileged classes, as well as a Brechtian vision of how those cast to the bottom of society blindly victimize one another. Indeed, the journey of the Rincons -- from their desolate Mexican village to the terrors of exploitation on the undocumented edge of American society and finally into the whirling, pyrotechnically presented catastrophe toward which the story builds -- more than confirms Mr. Boyle's reputation as a novelist of exuberance and invention, gained with such pop extravaganzas as "World's End" and "The Road to Wellville." It also adds to his fictional range an openhearted compassion for those whom society fears and reviles. But Mr. Boyle was clearly not interested in merely writing a novel about illegal aliens scrabbling for a living. For he has divided his considerable narrative and stylistic gifts between the Rincons' story and that of Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, the rather contemptible yuppie couple whose deeply unremarkable experiences are set in opposition to the Rincons'. It is here, alas, that Mr. Boyle undoes himself. Delaney is described on the very first page as "a liberal humanist with an unblemished driving record and a freshly waxed Japanese car with personalized plates." It is a mode of portrayal that is characteristic of much of Mr. Boyle's earlier work, a kind of comedy that finds its roots in sarcasm. In Mr. Boyle's case, this sarcasm is often taken for buoyancy and even daring, but in "The Tortilla Curtain" it rings hollow. When a character is described in terms of his driving record and his vanity plates, the reader can only hope that character is a minor one, a walk-on. But when you realize that you are being asked to read on and on about someone the author obviously doesn't care deeply about (and has, in fact, just trashed with the flick of an easy laugh), your heart begins to sink. Even when the novel's plot begins to activate Delaney and sour his usually beatific goofy world view, our reaction to the transformation is interrupted by the necessity of coping with Mr. Boyle's persistent elbow in our ribs: "He was in a rage, and he tried to calm himself. It seemed he was always in a rage lately -- he, Delaney Mossbacher, the Pilgrim of Topanga Creek -- he who led the least stressful existence of anybody on earth besides maybe a handful of Tibetan lamas." Like her nature-writer husband, Kyra Mossbacher is cut up and offered to us on a Lazy Susan of rude remarks. "Real estate was her life," the omnipotent narrator would have us believe, the moment Kyra appears on the scene. A bit later, we learn the following: "For Kyra, sex was therapeutic, a release from sorrow, tension, worry, and she plunged into it in moments of emotional distress as others might have sunk themselves in alcohol or drugs -- and who was Delaney to argue? She'd been especially passionate around the time her mother was hospitalized for her gall bladder operation." Mr. Boyle's fictional strategy is puzzling. Why are we being asked to follow the fates of characters for whom he clearly feels such contempt? Not surprisingly, this is ultimately off-putting. Perhaps Mr. Boyle has received too much praise for his zany sense of humor; in this book, that wit often seems merely a maddening volley of cheap shots. It's like living next door to a gun nut who spends all day and half the night shooting at beer bottles. The great risk of a novel with a dual structure is that the reader will fasten on one of the stories at the expense of the other. In "The Tortilla Curtain," the drama, feeling and stylistic bravado, the emotional reach that Mr. Boyle brings to the story of the Rincons so profoundly exceed what he brings to the Mossbachers that the book itself ends up feeling as disunited as the society Mr. Boyle is attempting to portray. And that's a pity, because there is life here and moments of very fine writing. ("The fire sat low on the horizon, like a gas burner glowing under the great black pot of the sky.") A few months ago, Mr. Boyle was asked in an interview how he voted on Proposition 187. Perhaps anticipating being asked the same question over and over on his upcoming book tour, he replied, "I don't want to reveal that. I'm not running for office." It's hard to imagine John Steinbeck being quite so coy about the rights of migrant workers or the importance of unions, but, as they say on television, "Hey, it's the 90's!" "The Tortilla Curtain" is a political novel for an age that has come to distrust not only politicians but political solutions, a modernist muckraking novel by an author who sees the muck not only in class structure and prejudice but in the souls of human beings. Yet where the socially engaged novel once offered critique, Mr. Boyle provides contempt -- even poor Candido, whose plight has been engaging our sympathies throughout this novel, is eventually seen "weaving his way through the scrub, drawn like an insect to the promise of distant lights." Contempt is a dangerous emotion, luring us into believing that we understand more than we do. Contempt causes us to jeer rather than speak, to poke at rather than touch. Despite his celebrated gifts, T. Coraghessan Boyle may be the most contemptuous of our well-known novelists.
--------------------------------------------------
The Pilgrim of Topanga Creek Date:
Byline:
Lead:
THE TORTILLA CURTAIN By T. Coraghessan Boyle. VIKING has somehow got the idea it has another "Grapes of Wrath" on its hands. Then again, T. Coraghessan Boyle may have contributed to the delusion by using a few lines from Steinbeck's novel as the epigraph to his own meditation on the dispossessed and the American dream, California style. But while Steinbeck's tale of the Joad family was the very apotheosis of the proletarian novel, with its almost surreal emotional clarity and passages of nearly overpowering pathos, "The Tortilla Curtain" is, as the dust jacket would have it, about "the Okies of the 1990's." This apparently means that the narrative contains no real heroes or villains, and that the suddenly old-fashioned hopefulness of Steinbeck's book is nowhere to be found. In "The Tortilla Curtain," Mr. Boyle deftly portrays Los Angeles's Topanga Canyon, catching both its privileged society and its underlying geological and ecological instability. But while the book has heft, its story is slight, and not unfamiliar: An undocumented Mexican couple struggle for survival in the interstices of society and in the canyon itself, even as an affluent Anglo couple live their fearful, selfish existence behind the dubious protection of a walled development called Arroyo Blanco Estates. We first meet Candido Rincon when he is hit by a car driven by the male half of the novel's Anglo couple, a self-styled Annie Dillard disciple named Delaney Mossbacher. Candido is in California with his young pregnant wife, America, having recently braved another crossing of the border. Candido and America are part of California's unacknowledged work force, cogs in the vast human machine that does the state's brute labor and without whom (Proposition 187 to the contrary) the state could probably not survive. Mr. Boyle is first-rate in capturing the terror of looking for work in an alien society, as in this passage describing Candido's experience at a parking-lot labor exchange: "The contractors began to arrive, the white men with their big bleached faces and soulless eyes, enthroned in their trucks. They wanted two men or three, they wanted four or five, no questions asked, no wage stipulated, no conditions or terms of employment. A man could be pouring concrete one day, spraying pesticide the next -- or swabbing out urinals, spreading manure, painting, weeding, hauling, laying brick or setting tile. You didn't ask questions. You got in the back of the truck and you went where they took you." Mr. Boyle is convincing, and even stirring, in his telling of Candido and America's story, bringing to it an agitprop artist's perspective on both society's injustices and the cold implacability of the privileged classes, as well as a Brechtian vision of how those cast to the bottom of society blindly victimize one another. Indeed, the journey of the Rincons -- from their desolate Mexican village to the terrors of exploitation on the undocumented edge of American society and finally into the whirling, pyrotechnically presented catastrophe toward which the story builds -- more than confirms Mr. Boyle's reputation as a novelist of exuberance and invention, gained with such pop extravaganzas as "World's End" and "The Road to Wellville." It also adds to his fictional range an openhearted compassion for those whom society fears and reviles. But Mr. Boyle was clearly not interested in merely writing a novel about illegal aliens scrabbling for a living. For he has divided his considerable narrative and stylistic gifts between the Rincons' story and that of Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, the rather contemptible yuppie couple whose deeply unremarkable experiences are set in opposition to the Rincons'. It is here, alas, that Mr. Boyle undoes himself. Delaney is described on the very first page as "a liberal humanist with an unblemished driving record and a freshly waxed Japanese car with personalized plates." It is a mode of portrayal that is characteristic of much of Mr. Boyle's earlier work, a kind of comedy that finds its roots in sarcasm. In Mr. Boyle's case, this sarcasm is often taken for buoyancy and even daring, but in "The Tortilla Curtain" it rings hollow. When a character is described in terms of his driving record and his vanity plates, the reader can only hope that character is a minor one, a walk-on. But when you realize that you are being asked to read on and on about someone the author obviously doesn't care deeply about (and has, in fact, just trashed with the flick of an easy laugh), your heart begins to sink. Even when the novel's plot begins to activate Delaney and sour his usually beatific goofy world view, our reaction to the transformation is interrupted by the necessity of coping with Mr. Boyle's persistent elbow in our ribs: "He was in a rage, and he tried to calm himself. It seemed he was always in a rage lately -- he, Delaney Mossbacher, the Pilgrim of Topanga Creek -- he who led the least stressful existence of anybody on earth besides maybe a handful of Tibetan lamas." Like her nature-writer husband, Kyra Mossbacher is cut up and offered to us on a Lazy Susan of rude remarks. "Real estate was her life," the omnipotent narrator would have us believe, the moment Kyra appears on the scene. A bit later, we learn the following: "For Kyra, sex was therapeutic, a release from sorrow, tension, worry, and she plunged into it in moments of emotional distress as others might have sunk themselves in alcohol or drugs -- and who was Delaney to argue? She'd been especially passionate around the time her mother was hospitalized for her gall bladder operation." Mr. Boyle's fictional strategy is puzzling. Why are we being asked to follow the fates of characters for whom he clearly feels such contempt? Not surprisingly, this is ultimately off-putting. Perhaps Mr. Boyle has received too much praise for his zany sense of humor; in this book, that wit often seems merely a maddening volley of cheap shots. It's like living next door to a gun nut who spends all day and half the night shooting at beer bottles. The great risk of a novel with a dual structure is that the reader will fasten on one of the stories at the expense of the other. In "The Tortilla Curtain," the drama, feeling and stylistic bravado, the emotional reach that Mr. Boyle brings to the story of the Rincons so profoundly exceed what he brings to the Mossbachers that the book itself ends up feeling as disunited as the society Mr. Boyle is attempting to portray. And that's a pity, because there is life here and moments of very fine writing. ("The fire sat low on the horizon, like a gas burner glowing under the great black pot of the sky.") A few months ago, Mr. Boyle was asked in an interview how he voted on Proposition 187. Perhaps anticipating being asked the same question over and over on his upcoming book tour, he replied, "I don't want to reveal that. I'm not running for office." It's hard to imagine John Steinbeck being quite so coy about the rights of migrant workers or the importance of unions, but, as they say on television, "Hey, it's the 90's!" "The Tortilla Curtain" is a political novel for an age that has come to distrust not only politicians but political solutions, a modernist muckraking novel by an author who sees the muck not only in class structure and prejudice but in the souls of human beings. Yet where the socially engaged novel once offered critique, Mr. Boyle provides contempt -- even poor Candido, whose plight has been engaging our sympathies throughout this novel, is eventually seen "weaving his way through the scrub, drawn like an insect to the promise of distant lights." Contempt is a dangerous emotion, luring us into believing that we understand more than we do. Contempt causes us to jeer rather than speak, to poke at rather than touch. Despite his celebrated gifts, T. Coraghessan Boyle may be the most contemptuous of our well-known novelists.
WEEK FOUR WRITING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ
For this post, simply copy one sentence from Tortilla Curtain that you found particularly interesting. Write the sentence and then tell us why you find that part of what you read so compelling.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
GRADING THE BLOG...
I was talking with a student in office hours yesterday (Hi Nicole) and she asked how the blogs are graded. So, that made me want to write a special note to let you in a the thinking behind this course. First off, the blog is pass/no pass. If you write your blog entry and respond to another one (preferably more than one, but only one is required), and write your response to the reading, you get full credit for the blog portion of the course.
Second off, here is why we do this. There are now ample research to suggest that direct instruction in grammar does nothing to improve writing. Further, by turning many of us off to the written word, direct grammar instruction may actually cause harm, only making us not want to write. One of the proven means of writing better (the goal of this course) is to write more and to read more. That sounds so simple, but it should also be somewhat obvious; the more you read and write, the better you read and write.
No response needed for this one, but I wanted to share the good question and a little about why we structure the course this way...
Second off, here is why we do this. There are now ample research to suggest that direct instruction in grammar does nothing to improve writing. Further, by turning many of us off to the written word, direct grammar instruction may actually cause harm, only making us not want to write. One of the proven means of writing better (the goal of this course) is to write more and to read more. That sounds so simple, but it should also be somewhat obvious; the more you read and write, the better you read and write.
No response needed for this one, but I wanted to share the good question and a little about why we structure the course this way...
Sunday, April 14, 2013
WEEK THREE BLOG ENTRY
I recently saw a survey that found that 75% of meals in the United States are consumed outside of the primary residence...instead, we tend to eat in the car, the office, a restaurant, etc. Does this matter? What does it say about the U.S.? Does it change a culture?
WEEK THREE READING
Hello...this week's reading may be easier from a link, so here it is...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/13/best-foods-in-the-world
I will also paste it below, but it might be kind of messy. These short blurbs will help you jumpstart your food vocabulary.
1. Best place to eat: Oysters.
Richard Corrigan reckons Strangford Lough oysters are the world’s best. Photograph: John Smith/Corbis
"If I were to die tomorrow, I'd walk to Strangford, get a couple of bottles of really cold Chablis, and eat as many Strangford Lough oysters as I could. Then I'd die very happily indeed. There are very few places you can get Strangford Lough oysters now. Last time, we bought some from a company called Cuan and went to a beautiful local pub and opened them ourselves. The speed of the tidal movement, and the huge nutrient richness of the water, is what makes them so good. The only accompaniment you need is lemon juice and black pepper: you'd never ever use vinegar and shallots or Tabasco."
Cuan Oysters, Sketrick Island, Killinchy, Newtownards, County Down, Northern Ireland, 02897 541461, www.cuanoysters.com
2. Best place to eat: Aubergines
"The aubergines were slow- baked for six hours, brought to the table whole, and skinned in front of us. They took out the flesh, crisscrossed the aubergines with two knives, and then added whipped cream with hazelnuts, lemon, sweet pepper, oil, feta cheese, salt and pepper. Incredible."
Dinokratous & An, Polemou 22, Kolonaki, 11521 Athens, 0030 210 7400150, www.takioupia.com
3. Best place to eat: Hamburgers
There are many fine hamburgers in New York, even the most mediocre of which would put its British counterparts to shame. But the best is the bacon cheeseburger at a small Greenwich Village bistro called Little Owl. "This sandwich is so copiously juicy, so rich with precious bodily fluids," says Josh Ozersky, author of The Hamburger: A History, "that it practically haemorrhages onto the plate. But the meat, which is a signature blend from New York's virtuoso hamburger maker Pat La Frieda, is perfectly paired with a bun of uniquely moist and yielding character. It's by far the best cheeseburger in this or any other city."
90 Bedford St, New York, 001 212 741 4695, www.thelittleowlnyc.com
4. Best place to eat: Zabaglione
The best place in the world to eat zabaglione, according to Giorgio Locatelli, is at his uncle's restaurant, La Cinzianell, in Corgeno, northern Italy. "As the sun goes down behind Monte Rosa and it starts getting a bit chilly, the thing I enjoy most is the zabaglione prepared by my cousin Maurizio…"
Via Lago, 26 Corgeno, 0039 0 331 946 337
5. Best place to eat: Pho
Vietnam’s signature dish Pho at 'Pho 24' in Hanoi, Vietnam. Photograph: Krista Kennell/Corbis
Pho, a noodle soup with thin slices of meat (usually beef but sometimes chicken), is Vietnam's signature dish, and the issue of who makes it best is as tangled as white rice noodles in tasty broth. The Hanoi streets throw up a lot of persuasive contenders, such as the shack at 172 Ton Duc Thang Street. However, the sleek chain restaurant Pho 24, with branches around the country and across Asia, produces Vietnam's most reliably good pho. The meat is of a consistently high quality – a rarity in Vietnam – and the stock impresses even the hardest-to-please critics.
5 Nguyen Thiep Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (and other locations). 0084 88226278, www.pho24.com.vn
7. Best place to eat: Macaroons
The original M Ladurée opened his bakery on the rue Royale in 1862. In 1930 his grandson invented the double-decker macaroon – two shells of the meringue-like pastry held together by creamy ganache filling. Ladurée has produced the definitive macaroons ever since. In recent years the company has opened shops around the world, but the original is by far the best.
16 rue Royale, 75008 Paris, 0033 01 42 60 21 79, www.laduree.fr
8. Best place to eat: Roast Chicken
This Paris fixture, open since 1924, is the ultimate French bistro. Heads of state (Clinton, Gorbachev) and cultural giants (Welles, Hemingway) have come here to feast on sumptuous roast chicken, served whole with matchstick pommes frites and a simple green salad. It's touristy and expensive and the decor is a bit clichéd, but such details become trivial once the chicken (which inspired Simon Hopkinson to write his much-loved Roast Chicken and Other Stories) turns up at the table.
32 rue du Vertbois, 3e, 3rd arrondissement, Paris, 0033 1 48 87 77 48
9. Best place to drink: Milkshakes
The ingredients for the perfect milkshake are extremely good ice cream mixed with just the right amount of milk, and a classic American setting. The award-laden Fosselman's, in the LA suburb of Alhambra, has been offering both since 1924. The milkshakes, made with home-made ice cream, taste like you'd expect milkshakes to taste in the movies. Make a beeline for the double-chocolate malt.
1824 W Main Street, Alhambra, Los Angeles, 001 626 282 6533, www.fosselmans.com
10. Best place to eat: Texas barbecue
The title of best BBQ joint in Texas is hotly contested in a state where the consumption of charred meats is as serious as religion. Texas Monthly magazine does the definitive annual poll. Most recently, the magazine awarded the title to Snow's, a rank outsider that has been trading a mere five years. Run by a former rodeo clown and an elderly lady named Tootsie, the restaurant only opens on Saturday mornings and consists of a small number of tables around a smoking pit.
516 Main Street, Lexington, Texas, 001 979 773 4640 (Saturday only), www.snowsbbq.com
11. Best place to eat: Steak
Time magazine called it "the perfect steak". American Vogue's exacting food writer Jeffrey Steingarten said it was "probably the greatest steak I've ever eaten". They were referring to an enormous chuletón taken from the central rib section of a 16-year-old Rubia Gallega ox, dry-aged for 90 days, and served in the cellar dining room of a rural bodega named El Capricho, near León in north-west Spain.
Paraje de las Bodegas, s/n, Jimenez de Jamuz, near León, Spain, 0034 987 664224
12. Best place to eat: Fish and chips
The nearby Anstruther Fish Bar wins all the plaudits – it was named Fish and Chip Shop of the Year by the National Federation of Fish Friers last January – but locals swear by its rival, The Wee Chippy, which serves sublime fish and chips on the same street and without the endless queues.
4 Shore Street, Anstruther, Fife, 01333 310106
13. Best place to eat: Strawberry tart
"When I go to the south of France in the summer, I always visit the Restaurant de Bacon in the Cap d'Antibes and I wait eagerly, in front of the sea and the old town, for the most amazing wild strawberry tart. The crust melts in the mouth, it is deliciously flavoured with butter, and once you have finished it you feel delightfully naughty."
688 Boulevard de Bacon, 06160 Cap D'Antibes, France, 0033 4 93 61 50 02, www.restaurantdebacon.com
14. Best place to eat: Pastrami on rye
The mail order department of Katz's Delicatessen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
The legendary pastrami on rye from Katz's, New York's oldest (and possibly shabbiest) deli, could qualify as king of all sandwiches by virtue of size alone: a whole pound of brined beef, pre-trimming, is used in each serving. The sandwich – stacks of juicy meat with mustard and pickles between slices of rye bread – is as jaw-dropping, taste-wise, as it is gobstopping. (Recall Meg Ryan's unfaked endorsement of it in When Harry Met Sally.)
205 E Houston Street at Ludlow Street, New York, 001 212 254 2246, www.katzdeli.com
15. Best place to eat: Custard tart
Creamy, flaky custard tarts – served warm with cinnamon – are one of Portugal's great culinary gifts to the world. The original pasteis café in the Belém district of Lisbon, next to the monastery where the dessert was invented, is still the best: their secret recipe has been guarded since 1837. Sit down with a plateful, and a strong coffee, and you'll understand why more than 10,000 tarts are baked here every day.
Rua de Belém, 84-92, Belém, Lisbon, 00351 21 363 7423, www.pasteisdebelem.pt
16. Best place to eat: Leg of beef
"For the most wonderful leg of beef I can't go past Le Louchebem in Paris, a simple, plain café with a very, very good rotisserie, located in the old meat district of Les Halles. The beef comes with mashed potato and three different sauces."
31 rue Berger, Angle 10, rue des Prouvaires, Paris, 0033 1 42 33 12 99, www.le-louchebem.fr
17. Best place to drink: Tomato juice
"If you find yourself in Marin County, California, it's well worth the time to drive down the beautiful shoreline road to San Francisco and visit the Ferry Building for the heirloom organic tomato juice from Happy Girl Kitchen, which has a stall there on Saturdays. They blend it with coriander and chilli and it's quite literally the best tomato juice you'll ever taste."
Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market, One Ferry Building, San Francisco, 001 831 750 9579, www.happygirlkitchen.com
18. Best place to eat: Italian slow food
"You can get the most amazing 'slow food' in this tiny family- run restaurant which has been around for about 30 years. It is famous for its pappa pomodoro and ribollita – the two most traditional Tuscan bread soups. And they do the most delicious arista: pork loin cooked on the bone, stuffed with fennel seeds, garlic and rosemary, and served at room temperature."
Via del Parioncino 26, Florence, Italy, 0039 05 52 87 17 8
19. Best place to eat: Nordic food
"When I'm back home in Finland, I always visit Olo in Helsinki. The chef, Pekka Terävä, has created a brand in its own right, cooking modern Nordic cuisine with the best seasonal ingredients."
Kasarmikatu 44, 00130 Helsinki, Finland. 00358 9 665 565, www.olo-restaurant.com
20. Best place to buy: Olive oil
Mehmet Murat in his electrical shop. Photograph: Andy Hall
The most unlikely olive oil vendor in the world? At his electrical supply shop in London's Clerkenwell, Mehmet Murat sells wonderful, intensely fruity oil from his family's olive groves in Cyprus and south-west Turkey. Now he imports more than a 1,000 litres per year. His lemon-flavoured oil is good enough to drink on its own.
76 Compton Street, London EC1, 020 7251 4721, www.planet mem.com
Monte Amiata, Seggiano, Italy, 0039 069 7274787, www.manni.biz
21. Best place to eat: Tacos
People drive the length and breadth of Mexico City, causing traffic jams, to get to this neighbourhood taqueria, which spills out onto the street from dusk till dawn. The main draw is their superlative tacos al pastor – a speciality of the capital – made with pork carved from a shawarma-style spit and ultra-fresh salsa served in dramatically massive stone bowls.
4503 Lorenzo Boturini Street, 24 de Abril, Mexico City, Mexico, 0051 55 5764 1185, www.elpastorcitodeboturini.com
22. Best place to eat: Peking Duck
Beijing's most famous purveyor of Peking duck is nothing if not well-endorsed: more than 115 million ducks have been dished up in the restaurant's 145-year history, and China's first Premier, Zhou Enlai, personally chose the location for the seven-storey Hepingmen branch. Quantity hasn't affected quality: the duck, with its crispy red skin and melt-in-the-mouth flesh, is sublime – 400 versions of the classic dish are available: opt for the classic kaoya.
Hepingmen Dajie, Xuanwu District, Beijing, China, 0086 10 6552 3745, www.quanjude.com.cn
23. Best place to eat: Pork belly
The dining room at Gramercy Tavern in New York. Photograph: Neville Elder/Corbis
"As far as I'm concerned, the Gramercy Tavern is one of the best places to eat in New York, and the best place to eat pig. It is very relaxed but serves spectacular food. I always have the rack of pork and braised belly and it always tastes perfect."
42 East 20th Street, New York, New York, 001 212 477 0777, www.gramercytavern.com
24. Best place to eat: Vegetarian Indian
"Sagar Ratna, in Delhi, serves South Indian vegetarian food – pukka food that nourishes the body and soul and is always in harmony with the seasons. My favourite dish there has always been idli sambhar: steamed rice cakes with coconut chutney and sambhar lentils."
18 Defence Colony Market, New Delhi, 110024, Delhi, India, 0091 11 24 33 36 58
25. Best place to eat: Sushi
If you want the world's best sushi, don't even think of looking anywhere but Japan. Empty your bank account and eat at one of Tokyo's swankiest sushi temples, such as the three-Michelin-star Jiro in Ginza. Alternatively, go right to the heart of the action, to the city's overwhelming Tsukiji fish market (the largest on the planet), and eat unsurpassable sushi for a fraction of the price at Daiwa Sushi. It's a fast-moving hole-in-the-wall establishment without tables and it's only open for breakfast, but none of this matters once the expertly prepared rolls come your way. Try the melt-in-the-mouth tai, a type of sea bream that is impossible to get outside Japan.
Building 6, Chuo-ichiba, 5-2-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan, 0081 3 3547 6807
26. Best place to eat: Filipino cuisine
"The Lighthouse in Cebu in the Philippines is my favourite restaurant. We always eat bulalo (beef stew), banana heart salad, adobo (marinaded meat), baked oysters, pancit noodles, lechon de leche (suckling pig) and, to drink, green mango juice – my daughter is addicted to it! The staff are so friendly and welcoming. The chef has been there for more than 20 years, so the food is very consistent."
Gaisano Country Mall, Banilad, Cebu city, Philippines, 0063 32 231 2478
27. Best place to eat: California cuisine
"Chez Panisse doesn't just do the world's best Californian food: it is quite simply the best restaurant in the world. Superb."
1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, California, 001 510 548 5525, www.chezpanisse.com
28. Best place to eat: Algerian food
"To get a really good North African meal in Algeria you have to get yourself invited to someone's house, and as there are so few tourists, people would love to have you to their home for a meal. The few restaurants around tend to serve bad French food. That said, there is a handful of really good grilled-fish restaurants down in the port in Algiers. My favourite is a small, traditional place called Restaurant Gnaoua. The owner, Hamidou, understands Algerian cuisine. It's not an easy cuisine to get, but he just does."
Cite Sahraoui, les Deux Bassins, Ben Aknoun, Algiers, Algeria
29. Best place to eat: Classic French cuisine,
"I eat at Clos Des Gourmets two or three times a week when I'm in Paris. They only use seasonal ingredients and always add a touch of wackiness to very classic dishes. They love creating new things. I suppose it's new classic French cuisine. I'll have roast kidneys or grilled rabbit with fresh herbs in a white wine sauce, asparagus with truffle in early summer, and a lavender crème brûlée to finish. It's always madly busy but the dishes are always perfectly cooked. And it's amazingly cheap: ¤80 for three courses with wine. Unbelievable."
16 Avenue Rapp, Paris, 0033 1 45 51 75 61, www.closdesgourmets.com
30. Best place to eat: Tapas
"Cal Pep does completely amazing tapas. It has a brilliant atmosphere, and the bar is presided over by the owner, Pep, himself. Order the langoustines with onions, chickpeas, spinach and bacon, and fried seafood."
Plaça de les Olles 8, Barcelona, 0034 93 31 07 961, www.calpep.com
31. Best place to eat: Pizza
You could generate enough heat to fuel a brick oven with the argument over which country bakes the world's best pizza: Italy, where the concept originated, or America, where it was globalised. Neapolitan purists will make pilgrimages to hotspots such as La Sorrentina, outside Naples, whose chef has won the prestigious Naples Pizza Championship, but we contend that the upstart Yanks do it better. The best American pizza can be found, not in New York as is commonly assumed, but in New Haven, Connecticut, where the Pepe family has been spinning dough since 1925. Their white clam pie has no equals.
157 Wooster Street, New Haven, Connecticut, 001 203 865 5762, www.pepespizzeria.com
Pizzeria La Sorrentina, Via Domenico Pirozzi 37, Fratta Maggiore, Italy, 0039 338 3248615
32. Best place to eat: Thai curry
"When I'm in Bangkok, I go to Apsorn's Kitchen, also known as Krua Apsorn, a small restaurant just up from the National Library. It is a great place to go for incredibly traditional Thai food. I have the crab in curry powder, followed by the deep-fried kingfish with green mango and the yellow curry with prawns and lotus shoots."
503-505 Sam San Road, Dusit, Bangkok, Thailand 0066 2 24 18 52 8
33. Best place to eat: Simple French food
"When I go home, I go to Le Vin et L'Assiette in Besançon and order pâté de campagne, a big chunk of crusty bread and a glass of wine. The restaurant is honest, simple, and a wonderful place. It has fantastic wine cellars with local wines that people would never have heard of."
97 rue Battant, Besançon, France, 0033 3 81 81 48 18
34. Best place to eat: Ice cream
The legend about Romans making the earliest ice creams from the snows of Mount Etna may be apocryphal, but Sicily is still the best place for frozen treats in gelato-crazed Italy, and Italian ice cream, as everybody knows, is the finest in the world. (Gelato is made with considerably less butterfat than the heavier American variants, for starters.) Corrado Costanzo's pastry shop can be found in the crumbling baroque town of Noto, in the south-eastern corner of the island. We defy you to find an ice better than his transcendent mandarin-orange granita.
Via Silvio Spaventa 7, Noto, Sicily, 0039 931 835 243
35. Best place to eat: Kebabs
An entire Mumbai street gets overrun, nightly, by pilgrims to an unassuming grilled-food vendor on a pavement behind the Taj Hotel. People hunch over rickety outdoor tables, or the hoods of their cars, to gorge on cheap, basic but spectacular kebabs, roti rolls and drumsticks hot from the grill. The chicken tangdi kebab is especially delicious.
Tulloch Road, Apollo Bunder, Mumbai, India
36. Best place to eat: Ravioli
"I love the oxtail ravioli with black truffles and pigeon liver sauce at Babbo in New York, my favourite restaurant. It is a simple neighbourhood Italian, but it has a wonderful atmosphere . The only problem is that the restaurant is so busy you have to book a month in advance."
110 Waverly Place, New York, 001 212 777 0303, www.babbonyc.com
37. Best place to eat: Prawns
"The logo of this restaurant is actually a prawn, and they get their seafood from little dayboats. They serve the local Sanlucar prawn, which is mild and sweet, a bit like a tiger prawn but pinker. They do mantis shrimps too – prehistoric-looking things which taste like white crab meat. They steam them, and really needn't do anything else."
Restaurante Casa Bigote, Bajo de Guia, 10, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Andalucía, 0034 956 36 26 96/956 36 32 42
38. Best place to eat: Currywurst
The German obsession with currywurst – 800m portions of chopped sausage with sweet curry sauce are consumed each year – reaches its zenith in Berlin, where countless diners and roadside stalls vie for the currywurst crown. It's hard to improve on Konnopke's, which has been serving superlative sausage since 1930 under raised train tracks in Prenzlauerberg. Consume with fries and a cold bottle of Berliner Pilsner for maximum impact.
Schönhauser Allee 44a, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, 0049 30 442 7765, www.konnopke-imbiss.de
39. Best place to eat: Ham
"Aracena, 40 minutes north of Seville, feels like a frontier town, because north of it is an area the size of Wales of nonstop forest. Here groups of men disappear for months at a time harvesting the cork bark and tending the oak so the iberico pig may gorge on acorns. Black foot ham from nearby Jabugo is some of the finest in the country, and there is nothing better than sitting down in any of the bars and restaurants in Aracena to a plate of this rich delicacy, sliced and served with unpretentious understanding. Last time we were there we had a memorable revueltos (scrambled eggs) with setas (local wild mushrooms) and jamón at Casas."
Calle Colmenetas 41, Aracena, Huelva, Spain, 0034 959/128044
40. Best place to eat: Chocolate cake
"When Pierre Hermé first let me try his heart-shaped Chuao cake, made with blackcurrants and a chuao couverture from Pralus, I totally forgot where I was. It was a firework of aromas, temperatures and textures. The freshness of the fruit flirted with the roundness of the chocolate. Hermé is a genius – one of my chocolate gods. The cake is seasonal and available on demand, and now made with Valrhona, but it is still my favourite in the world."
72, rue Bonaparte, Paris, 0033 01 43 54 47 77, www.pierreherme.com
41. Best place to eat: Fried potatoes
"It's an ancient place, with a marble bar on which they note down what you've had with chalk. Father and son run the bar, while the grandmother and mother look after the stove. Go for the bomba, crushed potato balls with minced meat, bread-crumbed and deep-fried with a spicy sauce."
No 56 Carrer del Baluard, Barceloneta, Barcelona, Spain, 0034 93 221 4061
42. Best place to eat: Octopus
"On my most recent trip to the Dodecanese islands, outside a tiny taverna in Symi port that overlooked the beautiful bay, we ate monster 4kg octopus cooked in its own water then barbecued and brushed with the juice from the cooking. It was super-tender and crunchy on the outside. The flavours were incredibly intense – the juice had been flavoured with rosemary, garlic and olive oil. The best time to eat octopus here is May or late September."
Gialos, Symi 85600, Islands, Greece, 0030 22460 72033
43. Best place to eat: Bouillabaisse
"The most powerful experience I ever had with a bouillabaisse (Provençal fish stew) was at this restaurant by the sea in Antibes. The place itself is nothing fancy but it's very famous for this dish, and people travel a long way for it. They kill you with the price – it costs an arm and a leg – but it's worth it. They use fish from the region that's been caught that same morning, and bouillabaisse is their speciality: they do it better than anyone else on this planet. It's really an experience."
688 Boulevard de Bacon, 06160 Cap D'Antibes, France, 0033 4 93 61 50 02, www.restaurantdebacon.com
44. Best place to eat: Steak and kidney pie
Heston Blumenthal in his pub, The Hinds Head. Photograph: Karen Robinson
Heston Blumenthal made hundreds of different versions of steak and kidney pie before deciding that oxtail gave the preferred meaty kick. The result is on the menu at his pub, just down the road from The Fat Duck in Bray, and it is beyond spectacular.
High Street, Bray, Berkshire, 01628 626151, www.thehindsheadhotel.com
45. Best place to eat: Pasta
"This little restaurant in Verona makes the most beautiful pasta in the traditional way, rolling it into wafer thin sheets before cutting it into the various shapes. The pasta is rich and eggy with a slightly tough texture that ensures that it doesn't turn sloppy when cooked. We went recently and loved the pasta so much we bought some back for the chefs at the restaurant. It was so delicious that they ate it with just some olive oil – the pasta spoke for itself."
9 Via Paolo Zanotti, Torbe di Negrar di Volpolicella, Verona, Italy, 0039 0457500511, www.trattoriacaprini.it
46. Best place to eat: Ceviche
The ceviche craze has gone global in recent years (it now graces the menu at London's Nobu), but to really experience Peru's national dish of raw fish cured in lime juice and hot pepper, you have to venture into the backstreets of Lima. The title of best cebecheria is hotly contested in the Peruvian capital. Javier Wong's Sankuay undoubtedly has the greatest sense of theatre. There's no sign outside, and the building in the anonymous Balconcillo district turns out to be the chef's own home. There are only 10 tables, and no menu. Wong's cebiche, made with lenguado (a type of sole) and accompanied by octopus discs rather than the usual choclo (white maize) and camote (sweet potato), is out of this world.
Garcia Leon 114 (between block 3 and 4 of Av Canada), Santa Catalina, La Victoria, Lima, Peru, 0011 51 1 470 6217
47. Best place to eat: Suckling pig
"This restaurant is in the tiny village of Estellencs in Mallorca, where our mother grew up. Every time we come to visit we eat here – you actually have to walk through the terrace of the restaurant to get to our house. The suckling pig is delicious."
Plaça Constitució 7, 07192 Estellencs, Mallorca, 0034 971 618 576
48. Best place to eat: Curry
In a beehive of rooms off a hectic Old Delhi bazaar, the Zahiruddin family, which once cooked for Mughal emperors, has been serving sumptuous curries and grilled meats since 1913. The butter chicken curry, served in a rich tomato sauce, is as much a landmark as the colossal Jama Masjid at the end of the street. Devotees swear it's the best curry in India and therefore, naturally, the world.
Jama Masjid, Gala Kababian, Old Delhi, India, 0091 11 2326 9880, www.karimhoteldelhi.com
49. Best place to eat: Dim sum
"Hong Kong is the best place for dim sum, and Luk Yu Tea House is a Hong Kong institution. It feels very authentic, and the dim sum they do is of an extremely high quality (it's incredible how they've managed to keep both the quality and the authenticity). The menu hasn't really changed since it opened in 1933. You get things here you won't get anywhere else. They buy the best Chinese ham and grill it in small slices as an appetiser – amazing with a glass of red wine. And they still do incredible egg tarts."
24-26 Stanley Street, Central, Hong Kong, 00852 2523 5464
50. Best place to eat: Ramen
"People in Japan always say ramen (Japanese noodle soup) can't be this and can't be that. Ramen Jiro is very non-traditional, in your face, take it or leave it. You either love it or hate it, but people who like it are good people. It's got pork, it's got cabbage, it's got garlic, and the sauce is sweet. It's gnarly. There are several branches; my favourite is the one near Keio University."
2-14-11 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/13/best-foods-in-the-world
I will also paste it below, but it might be kind of messy. These short blurbs will help you jumpstart your food vocabulary.
The 50 best things to eat in the world, and where to eat them
From cake, steak and tapas, to oysters, chicken and burgers, Killian Fox roamed the world to find the 50 best things to eat and the best places to eat them in, with a little help from professionals like Raymond Blanc, Michel Roux, Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray
1. Best place to eat: Oysters.
Strangfor Lough, Northern Ireland
Richard Corrigan reckons Strangford Lough oysters are the world’s best. Photograph: John Smith/Corbis Cuan Oysters, Sketrick Island, Killinchy, Newtownards, County Down, Northern Ireland, 02897 541461, www.cuanoysters.com
2. Best place to eat: Aubergines
Ta Kioupa, Athens
"The aubergines were slow- baked for six hours, brought to the table whole, and skinned in front of us. They took out the flesh, crisscrossed the aubergines with two knives, and then added whipped cream with hazelnuts, lemon, sweet pepper, oil, feta cheese, salt and pepper. Incredible."Dinokratous & An, Polemou 22, Kolonaki, 11521 Athens, 0030 210 7400150, www.takioupia.com
3. Best place to eat: Hamburgers
Little Owl, New York
There are many fine hamburgers in New York, even the most mediocre of which would put its British counterparts to shame. But the best is the bacon cheeseburger at a small Greenwich Village bistro called Little Owl. "This sandwich is so copiously juicy, so rich with precious bodily fluids," says Josh Ozersky, author of The Hamburger: A History, "that it practically haemorrhages onto the plate. But the meat, which is a signature blend from New York's virtuoso hamburger maker Pat La Frieda, is perfectly paired with a bun of uniquely moist and yielding character. It's by far the best cheeseburger in this or any other city."90 Bedford St, New York, 001 212 741 4695, www.thelittleowlnyc.com
4. Best place to eat: Zabaglione
La Cinzianelle
The best place in the world to eat zabaglione, according to Giorgio Locatelli, is at his uncle's restaurant, La Cinzianell, in Corgeno, northern Italy. "As the sun goes down behind Monte Rosa and it starts getting a bit chilly, the thing I enjoy most is the zabaglione prepared by my cousin Maurizio…"Via Lago, 26 Corgeno, 0039 0 331 946 337
5. Best place to eat: Pho
Pho 24, Vietnam
Vietnam’s signature dish Pho at 'Pho 24' in Hanoi, Vietnam. Photograph: Krista Kennell/Corbis 5 Nguyen Thiep Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (and other locations). 0084 88226278, www.pho24.com.vn
7. Best place to eat: Macaroons
Laduree, Paris
The original M Ladurée opened his bakery on the rue Royale in 1862. In 1930 his grandson invented the double-decker macaroon – two shells of the meringue-like pastry held together by creamy ganache filling. Ladurée has produced the definitive macaroons ever since. In recent years the company has opened shops around the world, but the original is by far the best.16 rue Royale, 75008 Paris, 0033 01 42 60 21 79, www.laduree.fr
8. Best place to eat: Roast Chicken
L'Ami Louis, Paris
This Paris fixture, open since 1924, is the ultimate French bistro. Heads of state (Clinton, Gorbachev) and cultural giants (Welles, Hemingway) have come here to feast on sumptuous roast chicken, served whole with matchstick pommes frites and a simple green salad. It's touristy and expensive and the decor is a bit clichéd, but such details become trivial once the chicken (which inspired Simon Hopkinson to write his much-loved Roast Chicken and Other Stories) turns up at the table.32 rue du Vertbois, 3e, 3rd arrondissement, Paris, 0033 1 48 87 77 48
9. Best place to drink: Milkshakes
Fosselman's, Los Angeles
The ingredients for the perfect milkshake are extremely good ice cream mixed with just the right amount of milk, and a classic American setting. The award-laden Fosselman's, in the LA suburb of Alhambra, has been offering both since 1924. The milkshakes, made with home-made ice cream, taste like you'd expect milkshakes to taste in the movies. Make a beeline for the double-chocolate malt.1824 W Main Street, Alhambra, Los Angeles, 001 626 282 6533, www.fosselmans.com
10. Best place to eat: Texas barbecue
Snow's, Texas
The title of best BBQ joint in Texas is hotly contested in a state where the consumption of charred meats is as serious as religion. Texas Monthly magazine does the definitive annual poll. Most recently, the magazine awarded the title to Snow's, a rank outsider that has been trading a mere five years. Run by a former rodeo clown and an elderly lady named Tootsie, the restaurant only opens on Saturday mornings and consists of a small number of tables around a smoking pit.516 Main Street, Lexington, Texas, 001 979 773 4640 (Saturday only), www.snowsbbq.com
11. Best place to eat: Steak
El Carpicho, Jimenez de Jamuz, Spain
Time magazine called it "the perfect steak". American Vogue's exacting food writer Jeffrey Steingarten said it was "probably the greatest steak I've ever eaten". They were referring to an enormous chuletón taken from the central rib section of a 16-year-old Rubia Gallega ox, dry-aged for 90 days, and served in the cellar dining room of a rural bodega named El Capricho, near León in north-west Spain.Paraje de las Bodegas, s/n, Jimenez de Jamuz, near León, Spain, 0034 987 664224
12. Best place to eat: Fish and chips
The Wee Chippy, Fife, Scotland
The nearby Anstruther Fish Bar wins all the plaudits – it was named Fish and Chip Shop of the Year by the National Federation of Fish Friers last January – but locals swear by its rival, The Wee Chippy, which serves sublime fish and chips on the same street and without the endless queues.4 Shore Street, Anstruther, Fife, 01333 310106
13. Best place to eat: Strawberry tart
Restaurant de Bacon, Antibes, France
"When I go to the south of France in the summer, I always visit the Restaurant de Bacon in the Cap d'Antibes and I wait eagerly, in front of the sea and the old town, for the most amazing wild strawberry tart. The crust melts in the mouth, it is deliciously flavoured with butter, and once you have finished it you feel delightfully naughty."688 Boulevard de Bacon, 06160 Cap D'Antibes, France, 0033 4 93 61 50 02, www.restaurantdebacon.com
14. Best place to eat: Pastrami on rye
Katz's Deli, New York
The mail order department of Katz's Delicatessen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images 205 E Houston Street at Ludlow Street, New York, 001 212 254 2246, www.katzdeli.com
15. Best place to eat: Custard tart
Antiga Confeitaria de Belem, Lisbon
Creamy, flaky custard tarts – served warm with cinnamon – are one of Portugal's great culinary gifts to the world. The original pasteis café in the Belém district of Lisbon, next to the monastery where the dessert was invented, is still the best: their secret recipe has been guarded since 1837. Sit down with a plateful, and a strong coffee, and you'll understand why more than 10,000 tarts are baked here every day.Rua de Belém, 84-92, Belém, Lisbon, 00351 21 363 7423, www.pasteisdebelem.pt
16. Best place to eat: Leg of beef
Le Louchebem, Paris
"For the most wonderful leg of beef I can't go past Le Louchebem in Paris, a simple, plain café with a very, very good rotisserie, located in the old meat district of Les Halles. The beef comes with mashed potato and three different sauces."31 rue Berger, Angle 10, rue des Prouvaires, Paris, 0033 1 42 33 12 99, www.le-louchebem.fr
17. Best place to drink: Tomato juice
Happy Girl Kitchen, California
"If you find yourself in Marin County, California, it's well worth the time to drive down the beautiful shoreline road to San Francisco and visit the Ferry Building for the heirloom organic tomato juice from Happy Girl Kitchen, which has a stall there on Saturdays. They blend it with coriander and chilli and it's quite literally the best tomato juice you'll ever taste."Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market, One Ferry Building, San Francisco, 001 831 750 9579, www.happygirlkitchen.com
18. Best place to eat: Italian slow food
Coco Lezzone, Florence
"You can get the most amazing 'slow food' in this tiny family- run restaurant which has been around for about 30 years. It is famous for its pappa pomodoro and ribollita – the two most traditional Tuscan bread soups. And they do the most delicious arista: pork loin cooked on the bone, stuffed with fennel seeds, garlic and rosemary, and served at room temperature."Via del Parioncino 26, Florence, Italy, 0039 05 52 87 17 8
19. Best place to eat: Nordic food
Olo, Helsinki
"When I'm back home in Finland, I always visit Olo in Helsinki. The chef, Pekka Terävä, has created a brand in its own right, cooking modern Nordic cuisine with the best seasonal ingredients."Kasarmikatu 44, 00130 Helsinki, Finland. 00358 9 665 565, www.olo-restaurant.com
20. Best place to buy: Olive oil
Turkish embassy electrical supplies, London
Mehmet Murat in his electrical shop. Photograph: Andy Hall 76 Compton Street, London EC1, 020 7251 4721, www.planet mem.com
And Manni
One of the priciest olive oils in the world, the minimum order of a litre of Manni costs £190. Film director Armando Manni harvests olives from seven plantations at different altitudes on a Tuscan mountain and speed-couriers the oil in small, UV-resistant bottles. The flavours are extraordinary. Chef Thomas Keller, of The French Laundry and Per Se, has called it "the best olive oil in the market".Monte Amiata, Seggiano, Italy, 0039 069 7274787, www.manni.biz
21. Best place to eat: Tacos
El Pastorcito, Mexico City
People drive the length and breadth of Mexico City, causing traffic jams, to get to this neighbourhood taqueria, which spills out onto the street from dusk till dawn. The main draw is their superlative tacos al pastor – a speciality of the capital – made with pork carved from a shawarma-style spit and ultra-fresh salsa served in dramatically massive stone bowls.4503 Lorenzo Boturini Street, 24 de Abril, Mexico City, Mexico, 0051 55 5764 1185, www.elpastorcitodeboturini.com
22. Best place to eat: Peking Duck
Quanjude, Beijing
Beijing's most famous purveyor of Peking duck is nothing if not well-endorsed: more than 115 million ducks have been dished up in the restaurant's 145-year history, and China's first Premier, Zhou Enlai, personally chose the location for the seven-storey Hepingmen branch. Quantity hasn't affected quality: the duck, with its crispy red skin and melt-in-the-mouth flesh, is sublime – 400 versions of the classic dish are available: opt for the classic kaoya.Hepingmen Dajie, Xuanwu District, Beijing, China, 0086 10 6552 3745, www.quanjude.com.cn
23. Best place to eat: Pork belly
Gramercy Tavern, New York
The dining room at Gramercy Tavern in New York. Photograph: Neville Elder/Corbis 42 East 20th Street, New York, New York, 001 212 477 0777, www.gramercytavern.com
24. Best place to eat: Vegetarian Indian
Sagar Ratna, Delhi
"Sagar Ratna, in Delhi, serves South Indian vegetarian food – pukka food that nourishes the body and soul and is always in harmony with the seasons. My favourite dish there has always been idli sambhar: steamed rice cakes with coconut chutney and sambhar lentils."18 Defence Colony Market, New Delhi, 110024, Delhi, India, 0091 11 24 33 36 58
25. Best place to eat: Sushi
Daiwa sushi, Tokyo
If you want the world's best sushi, don't even think of looking anywhere but Japan. Empty your bank account and eat at one of Tokyo's swankiest sushi temples, such as the three-Michelin-star Jiro in Ginza. Alternatively, go right to the heart of the action, to the city's overwhelming Tsukiji fish market (the largest on the planet), and eat unsurpassable sushi for a fraction of the price at Daiwa Sushi. It's a fast-moving hole-in-the-wall establishment without tables and it's only open for breakfast, but none of this matters once the expertly prepared rolls come your way. Try the melt-in-the-mouth tai, a type of sea bream that is impossible to get outside Japan.Building 6, Chuo-ichiba, 5-2-1 Tsukiji, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Japan, 0081 3 3547 6807
26. Best place to eat: Filipino cuisine
Lighthouse Restaurant, Cebu, Philippines
"The Lighthouse in Cebu in the Philippines is my favourite restaurant. We always eat bulalo (beef stew), banana heart salad, adobo (marinaded meat), baked oysters, pancit noodles, lechon de leche (suckling pig) and, to drink, green mango juice – my daughter is addicted to it! The staff are so friendly and welcoming. The chef has been there for more than 20 years, so the food is very consistent."Gaisano Country Mall, Banilad, Cebu city, Philippines, 0063 32 231 2478
27. Best place to eat: California cuisine
Chez Panisse, Berkeley, California
"Chez Panisse doesn't just do the world's best Californian food: it is quite simply the best restaurant in the world. Superb."1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, California, 001 510 548 5525, www.chezpanisse.com
28. Best place to eat: Algerian food
Restaurant Gnaoua, Algiers
"To get a really good North African meal in Algeria you have to get yourself invited to someone's house, and as there are so few tourists, people would love to have you to their home for a meal. The few restaurants around tend to serve bad French food. That said, there is a handful of really good grilled-fish restaurants down in the port in Algiers. My favourite is a small, traditional place called Restaurant Gnaoua. The owner, Hamidou, understands Algerian cuisine. It's not an easy cuisine to get, but he just does."Cite Sahraoui, les Deux Bassins, Ben Aknoun, Algiers, Algeria
29. Best place to eat: Classic French cuisine,
Close des Gourmets, Paris
"I eat at Clos Des Gourmets two or three times a week when I'm in Paris. They only use seasonal ingredients and always add a touch of wackiness to very classic dishes. They love creating new things. I suppose it's new classic French cuisine. I'll have roast kidneys or grilled rabbit with fresh herbs in a white wine sauce, asparagus with truffle in early summer, and a lavender crème brûlée to finish. It's always madly busy but the dishes are always perfectly cooked. And it's amazingly cheap: ¤80 for three courses with wine. Unbelievable."16 Avenue Rapp, Paris, 0033 1 45 51 75 61, www.closdesgourmets.com
30. Best place to eat: Tapas
Cal Pep, Barcelona
"Cal Pep does completely amazing tapas. It has a brilliant atmosphere, and the bar is presided over by the owner, Pep, himself. Order the langoustines with onions, chickpeas, spinach and bacon, and fried seafood."Plaça de les Olles 8, Barcelona, 0034 93 31 07 961, www.calpep.com
31. Best place to eat: Pizza
Frank Pepe Pizzeria, New Haven, Conneticut
You could generate enough heat to fuel a brick oven with the argument over which country bakes the world's best pizza: Italy, where the concept originated, or America, where it was globalised. Neapolitan purists will make pilgrimages to hotspots such as La Sorrentina, outside Naples, whose chef has won the prestigious Naples Pizza Championship, but we contend that the upstart Yanks do it better. The best American pizza can be found, not in New York as is commonly assumed, but in New Haven, Connecticut, where the Pepe family has been spinning dough since 1925. Their white clam pie has no equals.157 Wooster Street, New Haven, Connecticut, 001 203 865 5762, www.pepespizzeria.com
Pizzeria La Sorrentina, Via Domenico Pirozzi 37, Fratta Maggiore, Italy, 0039 338 3248615
32. Best place to eat: Thai curry
Krua Apsorn, Bangkok
"When I'm in Bangkok, I go to Apsorn's Kitchen, also known as Krua Apsorn, a small restaurant just up from the National Library. It is a great place to go for incredibly traditional Thai food. I have the crab in curry powder, followed by the deep-fried kingfish with green mango and the yellow curry with prawns and lotus shoots."503-505 Sam San Road, Dusit, Bangkok, Thailand 0066 2 24 18 52 8
33. Best place to eat: Simple French food
Le Vin et L'Assiette, Besancon, France
"When I go home, I go to Le Vin et L'Assiette in Besançon and order pâté de campagne, a big chunk of crusty bread and a glass of wine. The restaurant is honest, simple, and a wonderful place. It has fantastic wine cellars with local wines that people would never have heard of."97 rue Battant, Besançon, France, 0033 3 81 81 48 18
34. Best place to eat: Ice cream
Corrado Costanzo, Noto, Sicily
The legend about Romans making the earliest ice creams from the snows of Mount Etna may be apocryphal, but Sicily is still the best place for frozen treats in gelato-crazed Italy, and Italian ice cream, as everybody knows, is the finest in the world. (Gelato is made with considerably less butterfat than the heavier American variants, for starters.) Corrado Costanzo's pastry shop can be found in the crumbling baroque town of Noto, in the south-eastern corner of the island. We defy you to find an ice better than his transcendent mandarin-orange granita.Via Silvio Spaventa 7, Noto, Sicily, 0039 931 835 243
35. Best place to eat: Kebabs
Bade Miya, Mumbai
An entire Mumbai street gets overrun, nightly, by pilgrims to an unassuming grilled-food vendor on a pavement behind the Taj Hotel. People hunch over rickety outdoor tables, or the hoods of their cars, to gorge on cheap, basic but spectacular kebabs, roti rolls and drumsticks hot from the grill. The chicken tangdi kebab is especially delicious.Tulloch Road, Apollo Bunder, Mumbai, India
36. Best place to eat: Ravioli
Babbo, New York
"I love the oxtail ravioli with black truffles and pigeon liver sauce at Babbo in New York, my favourite restaurant. It is a simple neighbourhood Italian, but it has a wonderful atmosphere . The only problem is that the restaurant is so busy you have to book a month in advance."110 Waverly Place, New York, 001 212 777 0303, www.babbonyc.com
37. Best place to eat: Prawns
Casa Bigote, Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain
"The logo of this restaurant is actually a prawn, and they get their seafood from little dayboats. They serve the local Sanlucar prawn, which is mild and sweet, a bit like a tiger prawn but pinker. They do mantis shrimps too – prehistoric-looking things which taste like white crab meat. They steam them, and really needn't do anything else."Restaurante Casa Bigote, Bajo de Guia, 10, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Cádiz, Andalucía, 0034 956 36 26 96/956 36 32 42
38. Best place to eat: Currywurst
Konnopke's Imbiss, Berlin
The German obsession with currywurst – 800m portions of chopped sausage with sweet curry sauce are consumed each year – reaches its zenith in Berlin, where countless diners and roadside stalls vie for the currywurst crown. It's hard to improve on Konnopke's, which has been serving superlative sausage since 1930 under raised train tracks in Prenzlauerberg. Consume with fries and a cold bottle of Berliner Pilsner for maximum impact.Schönhauser Allee 44a, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, 0049 30 442 7765, www.konnopke-imbiss.de
39. Best place to eat: Ham
Casas, Aracena, Spain
"Aracena, 40 minutes north of Seville, feels like a frontier town, because north of it is an area the size of Wales of nonstop forest. Here groups of men disappear for months at a time harvesting the cork bark and tending the oak so the iberico pig may gorge on acorns. Black foot ham from nearby Jabugo is some of the finest in the country, and there is nothing better than sitting down in any of the bars and restaurants in Aracena to a plate of this rich delicacy, sliced and served with unpretentious understanding. Last time we were there we had a memorable revueltos (scrambled eggs) with setas (local wild mushrooms) and jamón at Casas."Calle Colmenetas 41, Aracena, Huelva, Spain, 0034 959/128044
40. Best place to eat: Chocolate cake
Pierre Herme, Paris
"When Pierre Hermé first let me try his heart-shaped Chuao cake, made with blackcurrants and a chuao couverture from Pralus, I totally forgot where I was. It was a firework of aromas, temperatures and textures. The freshness of the fruit flirted with the roundness of the chocolate. Hermé is a genius – one of my chocolate gods. The cake is seasonal and available on demand, and now made with Valrhona, but it is still my favourite in the world."72, rue Bonaparte, Paris, 0033 01 43 54 47 77, www.pierreherme.com
41. Best place to eat: Fried potatoes
Bomba Bar Cova Fumada, Barcelona
"It's an ancient place, with a marble bar on which they note down what you've had with chalk. Father and son run the bar, while the grandmother and mother look after the stove. Go for the bomba, crushed potato balls with minced meat, bread-crumbed and deep-fried with a spicy sauce."No 56 Carrer del Baluard, Barceloneta, Barcelona, Spain, 0034 93 221 4061
42. Best place to eat: Octopus
Tholos, Symi, Greece
"On my most recent trip to the Dodecanese islands, outside a tiny taverna in Symi port that overlooked the beautiful bay, we ate monster 4kg octopus cooked in its own water then barbecued and brushed with the juice from the cooking. It was super-tender and crunchy on the outside. The flavours were incredibly intense – the juice had been flavoured with rosemary, garlic and olive oil. The best time to eat octopus here is May or late September."Gialos, Symi 85600, Islands, Greece, 0030 22460 72033
43. Best place to eat: Bouillabaisse
Restaurant de Bacon, Antibes, France
"The most powerful experience I ever had with a bouillabaisse (Provençal fish stew) was at this restaurant by the sea in Antibes. The place itself is nothing fancy but it's very famous for this dish, and people travel a long way for it. They kill you with the price – it costs an arm and a leg – but it's worth it. They use fish from the region that's been caught that same morning, and bouillabaisse is their speciality: they do it better than anyone else on this planet. It's really an experience."688 Boulevard de Bacon, 06160 Cap D'Antibes, France, 0033 4 93 61 50 02, www.restaurantdebacon.com
44. Best place to eat: Steak and kidney pie
The Hinds Head, Bray
Heston Blumenthal in his pub, The Hinds Head. Photograph: Karen Robinson High Street, Bray, Berkshire, 01628 626151, www.thehindsheadhotel.com
45. Best place to eat: Pasta
Trattoria Caprini, Verona, Italy
"This little restaurant in Verona makes the most beautiful pasta in the traditional way, rolling it into wafer thin sheets before cutting it into the various shapes. The pasta is rich and eggy with a slightly tough texture that ensures that it doesn't turn sloppy when cooked. We went recently and loved the pasta so much we bought some back for the chefs at the restaurant. It was so delicious that they ate it with just some olive oil – the pasta spoke for itself."9 Via Paolo Zanotti, Torbe di Negrar di Volpolicella, Verona, Italy, 0039 0457500511, www.trattoriacaprini.it
46. Best place to eat: Ceviche
Sankuay, Lima, Peru
The ceviche craze has gone global in recent years (it now graces the menu at London's Nobu), but to really experience Peru's national dish of raw fish cured in lime juice and hot pepper, you have to venture into the backstreets of Lima. The title of best cebecheria is hotly contested in the Peruvian capital. Javier Wong's Sankuay undoubtedly has the greatest sense of theatre. There's no sign outside, and the building in the anonymous Balconcillo district turns out to be the chef's own home. There are only 10 tables, and no menu. Wong's cebiche, made with lenguado (a type of sole) and accompanied by octopus discs rather than the usual choclo (white maize) and camote (sweet potato), is out of this world.Garcia Leon 114 (between block 3 and 4 of Av Canada), Santa Catalina, La Victoria, Lima, Peru, 0011 51 1 470 6217
47. Best place to eat: Suckling pig
Montimar, Estellencs, Mallorca
"This restaurant is in the tiny village of Estellencs in Mallorca, where our mother grew up. Every time we come to visit we eat here – you actually have to walk through the terrace of the restaurant to get to our house. The suckling pig is delicious."Plaça Constitució 7, 07192 Estellencs, Mallorca, 0034 971 618 576
48. Best place to eat: Curry
Karim's, Delhi
In a beehive of rooms off a hectic Old Delhi bazaar, the Zahiruddin family, which once cooked for Mughal emperors, has been serving sumptuous curries and grilled meats since 1913. The butter chicken curry, served in a rich tomato sauce, is as much a landmark as the colossal Jama Masjid at the end of the street. Devotees swear it's the best curry in India and therefore, naturally, the world.Jama Masjid, Gala Kababian, Old Delhi, India, 0091 11 2326 9880, www.karimhoteldelhi.com
49. Best place to eat: Dim sum
Luk Yu Tea House, Hong Kong
"Hong Kong is the best place for dim sum, and Luk Yu Tea House is a Hong Kong institution. It feels very authentic, and the dim sum they do is of an extremely high quality (it's incredible how they've managed to keep both the quality and the authenticity). The menu hasn't really changed since it opened in 1933. You get things here you won't get anywhere else. They buy the best Chinese ham and grill it in small slices as an appetiser – amazing with a glass of red wine. And they still do incredible egg tarts."24-26 Stanley Street, Central, Hong Kong, 00852 2523 5464
50. Best place to eat: Ramen
Ramen Jiro, Tokyo
"People in Japan always say ramen (Japanese noodle soup) can't be this and can't be that. Ramen Jiro is very non-traditional, in your face, take it or leave it. You either love it or hate it, but people who like it are good people. It's got pork, it's got cabbage, it's got garlic, and the sauce is sweet. It's gnarly. There are several branches; my favourite is the one near Keio University."2-14-11 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Friday, April 12, 2013
ESSAY #1...THE RESTAURANT REVIEW
This is our first larger assignment. The process for writing and turning the paper in is below. The essay must be turned in by next Saturday, April 20, at midnight. You will only turn this in online, to turnitin.com.
PLease, if you have any questions at all, let me know and I will try to help as soon as possible. Happy eating and writing about eating!
RESTAURANT REVIEW: (20%) Go to any restaurant in town. As you eat, take notes on the ambiance, the food, and the service. You may choose any restaurant (from Taco Bell to Café Med), but you should use this writing assignment to explore your descriptive capabilities. Use sound, touch, taste, smell, and the look of the food and surroundings. The review should be approximately two pages in length. You may use the first-person in this review.
The length is somewhat up to you, but it is probably best to think about a couple of pages.
I am looking most here at your ability to describe both the food and the experience!
Basically, you should go to a restaurant and capture the eating event on paper. You may use first person and may write in a fairly informal tone. This is due on Saturday, 4/20, by midnight.
HERE'S HOW YOU TURN THIS PAPER IN:
Once your essay is finished, you will upload the final draft to turnitin.com
If you have not used this site before, you will go to turnitin.com and sign in using your own information. To enroll in the class, you will need the CLASS ID and password. They are below:
CLASS ID: 6355526
PASSWORD: english
Once you are signed in, you will click on Restaurant Review, which is the only available assignment right now. You will submit your paper there. That is it. If you have trouble with this, let me know.
Again, that assignment is due on Saturday and will be turned in only at turnitin.com.
Best,
dr. s
PLease, if you have any questions at all, let me know and I will try to help as soon as possible. Happy eating and writing about eating!
RESTAURANT REVIEW: (20%) Go to any restaurant in town. As you eat, take notes on the ambiance, the food, and the service. You may choose any restaurant (from Taco Bell to Café Med), but you should use this writing assignment to explore your descriptive capabilities. Use sound, touch, taste, smell, and the look of the food and surroundings. The review should be approximately two pages in length. You may use the first-person in this review.
The length is somewhat up to you, but it is probably best to think about a couple of pages.
I am looking most here at your ability to describe both the food and the experience!
Basically, you should go to a restaurant and capture the eating event on paper. You may use first person and may write in a fairly informal tone. This is due on Saturday, 4/20, by midnight.
HERE'S HOW YOU TURN THIS PAPER IN:
Once your essay is finished, you will upload the final draft to turnitin.com
If you have not used this site before, you will go to turnitin.com and sign in using your own information. To enroll in the class, you will need the CLASS ID and password. They are below:
CLASS ID: 6355526
PASSWORD: english
Once you are signed in, you will click on Restaurant Review, which is the only available assignment right now. You will submit your paper there. That is it. If you have trouble with this, let me know.
Again, that assignment is due on Saturday and will be turned in only at turnitin.com.
Best,
dr. s
Sunday, April 7, 2013
WEEK TWO BLOG ENTRY
Is food culture? Is culture food? What is the relationship between people and what people eat?
Think broadly...think globally. Think with your stomach.
(okay, I know this question may, at first glance, seem odd. So remember this: these blog entries are intended to get you to write. If you think the height of U.S. culture can be found at Chuck E. Cheese, then write about that. What you write here is not intended to produce the correct answer but a certain volume of interesting writing. Through this writing, I promise you will become more fluent with the pen...well, keyboard. Happy writing this week!)
Think broadly...think globally. Think with your stomach.
(okay, I know this question may, at first glance, seem odd. So remember this: these blog entries are intended to get you to write. If you think the height of U.S. culture can be found at Chuck E. Cheese, then write about that. What you write here is not intended to produce the correct answer but a certain volume of interesting writing. Through this writing, I promise you will become more fluent with the pen...well, keyboard. Happy writing this week!)
WEEK TWO READING
The
Find: Taco María truck survives the downturn
By Miles Clements Special to The Los Angeles Times
January 19, 2012
When food truck fatigue finally set in among the Twitter-equipped some time last year, the mobile movement all but stalled. Gone were the throngs that waited for hours, their attentions shifted instead to newly minted food artisans and itinerant pop-up restaurants. But in a Darwinian twist, only the strongest trucks have survived. And though the thrill of the chase may be gone for some, what remains are by and large the best meals on wheels.
Taco María is a product of that natural selection. The truck is helmed by Carlos Salgado, whose culinary pedigree instantly drove Taco María onto the radar screen of every serious Orange County eater. His has indeed an impressive résumé: Salgado served as pastry chef in some of the Bay Area's top restaurants, including Daniel Patterson's Coi and Oakland's Commis. He returned home to Orange County to help his parents transform the family's taquería. Taco María is what emerged from that reinvention, a truck that's constantly re-imagining lonchera traditions with the techniques and style of Mexican alta cocina.
"My parents' restaurant, La Siesta [in Orange], has been in business for over 25 years," Salgado says. "It was when they started talking about selling a few years ago that I began pointing myself back toward my hometown. Taco María was to be an extension of the restaurant and a flagship for our catering operations.
"Coming to work for a different audience, at a different price point, I've had to simplify my approach and distill the cooking ethics that are most important to me into a method that works within the food truck model. And while I may not have a kitchen full of highly trained, Michelin-quality cooks, a Pacojet, Cryovac machine or a dozen immersion circulators, I do have my family to support me and keep me grounded. My dad is the best sous-chef I could imagine having."
Those at the truck inevitably start with the aracherra taco, made with grilled hanger steak, a blistered shisito pepper, caramelized onion and bacon's smoky quintessence. The taco has both the humble charm of a backyard barbecue and the finesse of a fine steakhouse.
Yet even the most hard-core carnivores ultimately end up ordering the jardineros taco as well: knobs of roasted pumpkin, black beans, cotija cheese and a pumpkin seed salsa de semillas. There's no need for meat — this is a vegetarian taco built not on the artifice of mock meat or incongruous fusion but on the simple rhythms of the market.
If the aracherra doesn't sway you, there's always the carnitas. The slow-cooked pork shoulder is lashed with a bit of citrus and enlivened by the noticeable warmth of cinnamon. The mole de pollo is even more richly spiced — the mahogany mole is as complex as an Indian curry.
But Taco María's ever-changing specials are its signature. The truck's quesadilla de tuétano triggers Pavlovian devotion. It's a dish already cemented in food truck lore: crisp nuggets of bone marrow, stringy queso Oaxaca and a garlic-and-herb paste pulverized in a molcajete. It's predictably rich but powerfully addictive.
Salgado's rendition of esquites is similarly good, chile- and lime-laced corn sautéed with garlic, thyme and epazote in a butter flavored with blackened corncobs and toasty husks.
"I was telling [my] mom about some of my favorite foods and struggling to find a translation for bone marrow," Salgado explains. "She said something like, 'I think we used to make quesadillas [with that].' I was floored and immediately wrote it into our opening menu. What I assumed would be a fringe dish for the adventurous actually turned out to be incredibly popular. My whole staff has cuts and scrapes on their hands from pushing marrow every day just to meet demand."
It isn't brunch without the truck's excellent chilaquiles: freshly fried tortilla chips enrobed in a cascabel chile sauce and topped with pickled onions, queso fresco and a fried egg. Taco María isn't all about masa, either — any taco can be turned into a burrito. And you've really got to try the beet salad dressed with avocado, orange, almonds and charred scallion vinaigrette.
There may be a melon-lemon grass agua fresca to drink, or perhaps one flush with hibiscus and Concord grape. Salgado's almond horchata, however, is what you'll want a jug of, almond milk perfumed with coriander seeds. It's a brilliant addition: fragrant and floral, the coriander is at once unmistakable and ingeniously subtle.
Whether it's by an obsessive need for completion or sheer force of will, you will find room for dessert. Salgado's sweets are every bit as good as his pastry training portends, like the steamed chocolate bread pudding strewn with fried peanuts and glazed with milky caramel. When there isn't dense rice pudding scented with star anise and cinnamon, there's a glorious ricotta flan of homemade ricotta, caramel and a few sangria-soaked raspberries.
Witness the truck's crowds at Orange County's farmers markets and business parks and you begin to understand Taco María's growing cult, a purveyor of precisely the kind of modern Mexican cooking that's destined not for disposable cardboard containers but fine porcelain.
Salgado hints at that future. "It's still too early for us to share details, but we're excited about creating a unique type of Mexican restaurant here in Orange County, where Mexican food is such a large part of our shared experience. Exactly where and when depend on how far our truck, Frida, can take us. What I can say is that the restaurant will remain local, honest and accessible, with a menu that is recognizably Mexican in soul, in a space that is central, warm and inviting and will hopefully become a fixture in our own community."
source: http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-find-20120119,0,3934262.story
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