It's Tiki Time!

Hello!

This June I will be celebrating four years in Los Angeles. Wow! Time really does fly. Turns out sometime last year I stopped feeling the zing of being out here, until a dose of summery spring weather mixed with a box of See's chocolates and Saveur magazine’s “Special Edition: Los Angeles” reignited the spirit of this town for me and my excitement to live here was revived.

Sure, one of the coolest parts of being in LA is the weather (right by cool I didn't mean cold ;). That's only one of the joys. The west coast, particularly southern California, is also home to a slew of all things tiki.

Within the last ten days I've had the pleasure of revisiting the first bar I went to as a native Angelino: the Tiki-Ti, LA's most awesome tiki bar on Sunset Blvd. An ex-pat colleague in NY sent me and then how about that, the people I became friends with out here were already loyal "Ti" fans. A few nights after a recent visit there, I dined at a new Trader Vic’s up the street from my apartment in downtown LA. It's true, any time I have a chance to visit a tiki-themed place – with its exotic retro vibe, gigantic (and potent!) tropical drinks and enchanting music – I go.

According to Wikipedia, “Tiki culture refers to a 20th-century theme used in Polynesian-style restaurants and clubs originally in the United States and then, to a lesser degree, around the world...inspired in part by tiki carvings and mythology.”

Well for some reason I’ve always been tickled by Polynesian Pop culture. This may have started as a kid while excitedly sharing a pupu platter at a loosely-Asian NJ restaurant with my family. But I know it especially gained steam when my dad took my sister and I to Disney World for a stay at the still-awesome Polynesian Resort hotel. That über-themed fortress is listed as one of the top tiki destinations in the country, complete with authentic luau dinners on the lovely artificial lake's shores. However, for the purposes of this blog – and selfishly because I live out here – the listing of top tiki places to eat, drink and shop contained in this post are well, all out west too. The destinations are listed in order of proximity to downtown LA (timed without traffic), and each place is linked to its own website.

So please enjoy this list, and feel free to add comments if I’ve missed any important place in the vicinity. Then I invite you to try one of these gems or try them all. Some serve food but all serve drinks. Some are better than others. I’ve tried a few as noted below, but certainly not many. And heck, discovering that "Don the Beachcomber" is still alive and well (even if not a true original location), and that it's only 36 minutes from home, means that particular stop on my tiki trail will soon be checked off that list.

1. GET YOUR TIKI DRINK ON ... and sometimes food too

(All locations are in California unless otherwise noted, distance is from downtown LA)

Trader Vics

Location: Downtown at LA Live, our pre-fab Times Square • Distance: 0 min.

Great atmosphere. Food and drink are hit and miss, with the hits being very good. Now a nationwide chain, the music piped into the dining room is more Applebee's and less Tahiti.

Tiki Ti

Location: Hollywood (per them; I say they're in Los Feliz or Silverlake) • Distance: 10 min.

Open Wednesday thru Saturday only, cash only, smoking allowed. No wine or beer. Profiled in the Saveur March issue. Don't let the rules scare you, it's a treat and an honor! The original proprietor, Ray Buhen, was one of the original bartenders at Don the Beachcomber. His son Michael and his grandsons Mike and Mark run the Tiki-Ti in Ray's memory today.

Damon’s Steak House

Location: Glendale • Distance: 15 min.

I was quite psyched to visit this restaurant in sleepy Glendale for its reputation of tiki decor and steak. Both were just okay.

Bahooka Ribs & Grog

Location: Rosemead • Distance: 22 min.

With a name like that, how can you not visit! A real trooper since 1967, when I visited two years ago their bar was cozy small, their decor looked a little worse for wear, and my friends as usual adored their baked ham steak.

Puka Bar

Location: Long Beach • Distance: 22 min.

Don the Beachcomber

Location: Huntington Beach (a.k.a. Sunset Beach) • Distance: 36 min.

"If you can't get to paradise, I'll bring it to you," Donn Beach – the founding father of tiki restaurants, bars and nightclubs – always said to his customers. His first venture was a bar in Hollywood in 1934. After an expansion of 16 locations, the original restaurants all closed and this lone location was repurposed in 2009 from an unrelated seafood restaurant. It serves only a handful of the 84 tropical drinks Donn Beach invented.

The Tonga Hut

Location: North Hollywood • Distance: 22 min.

Frankie’s Tiki Room

Location: Las Vegas, NV • Distance: 4.5 hours

Hula’s Island Grill & Tiki Room

2 Locations: Santa Cruz + Monterey

2 Distances: 6 hours, 2 min. + 5 hours, 51 min.

Forbidden Island Tiki Lounge

Location: Alameda • Distance: 6 hours, 6 min.

Kona Club

Location: Oakland, CA • Distance: 6 hours, 5 min.

The Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar

Location: San Francisco • Distance: 6 hours, 18 min.

Not your average tiki bar, this place is fancy and located in a Fairmont Hotel. It's practically Disney-esque! And that's okay, because the Tonga Room was one of the nation's first tiki palaces. It opened in 1945 and has since been refurbished. It looks amazing, and I definitely need to go there!

Kon Tiki Lounge

Location: Tuscon, AZ • Distance: 8 hours

Thatch

Location: Portland, OR • Distance: 16 hours

Looks like a place I would visit once and never leave! Next trip north, I am there. Oh and I'd be flying there, btw, not driving.

2. BUY TIKI STUFF!

Wacko

Location: Hollywood • Distance: 11 min.

This is a very fun store! Besides random tiki items, other wares include art books, crazy handbags and bacon-scented band-aids.

Lemon Tree Bungalow

Location: Santa Monica • Distance: 16 min.

Oceanic Arts

Location: Whittier • Distance: 25 min.

Bamboo Ben

Location: Huntington Beach • Distance: 43 min.

The Tiki Farm

Location: San Clemente • Distance: 1 hour, 14 min.

Shag the Store!

Location: Palm Springs • Distance: 1 hour, 50 min.

Opening May 8, 2010! This is great news for fans (like me) of this retro tiki-inspired art master.

All right now, that’s a lot of tiki! Enjoy it responsibly.

Until we eat again,

Marly

Europe Food!

Bonjour and Hallo!

Last week I returned from my 8th trip to Europe, and I wondered... Why do I keep going back to that part of the world? Well, it is awesome, but one of the main reasons is I’ve always had amazing experiences and discoveries centering around the food.

While I think my next trip may be to some new place, it’s always a treat to be in Europe, where the food is so fresh and less processed that it simply tastes better than food I experience day-to-day here.

So here is a list of some of the cool food we recently ate in Europe. If something is available in the U.S. I’ll mention it, otherwise you’ll just have to book a flight soon!

The List (with matching photos!):

1. Haggis – Pork parts, potatoes and spices finely mashed up like corned beef hash. Tastier than expected, my brain still couldn’t fully release the reality of my consumption, so I ate only a little. Or maybe I wasn't feeling too bad about it until the LAX customs guys forced me to a read the ingredients from a souvenir can of haggis brought back for a friend. That I could definitely have done without. Yes, ignorance is bliss!

2. Kouign Amann – The reputation of this Breton butter cake entered my consciousness before I even tasted it. How could a cake made with mainly sugar, butter and pastry baked into a caramelized crunchy buttery mass not have that effect on the human brain? Now I’ve had the pleasure of eating this twice. Once at BLD in Los Angeles, where it’s offered at brunch (I got it to go and ate it cold, not smart) and then in Paris again last week (hallelujah!). I found it peering out from behind more aggressive treats in a bake shop window and whirled in with my Euros. It took me three days to eat it due to its sultry artery-hardening richness. Yes, it was worth the wait. If you buy one at BLD, make sure to eat it there and ask for it warmed.

3. A non-continental complimentary hotel breakfast – That’s right, the breakfast that is included has serious meats and cheeses, soft-boiled eggs, country breads and apricot juice to go with the standard orange and grapefruit. This is what I want for my country! Real food in this scenario, with less crappy carbs and more protein deliciousness. Thank you.

4. Classic, simple French crepes – Made to order from a street vendor and handed over soft and steamy, the minimal additions of butter and sugar are the way to go here. Forget the Nutella or ham and cheese options (or save that for your second one). As a first taste, the most true to form is having it this way. It's all you need in the crepe department.

5. Eggs Benedict sandwich – Imagine an English muffin of sorts with herbed hollandaise-infused scrambled eggs and an unprocessed, fantastic slab of country ham. This was only $4 and didn't contain a tower of eggs to over-fill me before a flight. Original in flavor with great ingredients, this was a big fat yes.

6. Fun-flavored potato chips! – The people from Great Britain have always had it right. Instead of the typical BBQ, cheddar, and sour cream and chive, flavors include lamb with mint sauce, roast beef with mustard, smoked ham and pickle, prawn cocktail and the hysterical haggis.

7. Amazing chocolate – Beyond the Swiss brands of Cailler, Lindt and Frey selling specialty bars at the supermarket, the fresh chocolate from Läderach is saturated with whole caramelized almonds or hazelnuts. The Zurich-bought stash hidden in my desk is almost gone and I may have to wear black tomorrow to mourn it.

8. Interesting foods at the market – At M&S Market in Edinburgh, they had pretty ingenious fresh meals to go. They also had some frozen items I’d never seen, specifically international take out dinner kits. You could pick Chinese Favourites or Indian Takeaway, all filled with six different items from appetizers to mains, for about $15. Talk about a dinner time saver! Why didn’t we think of that?

9. Better tasting, more natural yogurt – Oh my in Switzerland and France you cannot imagine how much good yogurt is available. There are tons of flavors to choose from, with less processed sugar and more purposeful probiotics. At the Basel train station I picked up a cup of Nestle passion fruit yogurt, which was so tasty when finished I had no choice but to get every bit off the lid (see top photo). Christy said the vanilla yogurt made by Emmi tasted like custard. Emmi yogurt is for sale in Los Angeles at The Cheese Store of Silverlake at Sunset Junction.

10. French macarons from the source – When I first tasted a chocolate-passion fruit macaron by Pierre Hermé in 2005 (check out his new book, Macaron), I had no idea that every macaron-maker in the world would be copying his flavor combos and selling them off as their own. French macarons have become known in the U.S., but you have to be careful of bakers over here who use too much sugar. Plus, the flavors are often the same: chocolate, lemon, raspberry, pistachio, vanilla, coffee, strawberry. In fact, macarons have become so ubiquitous here that I even noticed my local Starbucks selling a pack of them for $10. Well, at Pierre Hermé this year they sadly didn’t have my favorites from 2005: the apricot or the olive oil. But they did have the rose and the chocolate-passion fruit, AND they had weird new flavors which boggled the mind: wasabi and balsamic vinegar. I feared these macarons, but I shouldn’t have. Where was all that Pierre Hermé trust? The new macaron flavors were phenomenal. The wasabi was subtle and had a dab of a mysterious red in the middle (see photo). It was divine. And the balsamic vinegar was just as subdued. This man is the master and I hope more area bakers will start mixing up the flavors to be a little more exotic, too.

11. Rösti with fried egg – This Swiss specialty is basically just shredded potatoes sautéed into a cake, and in this version topped with two fried eggs. We ate it as an appetizer to cheese fondue and it is always a simple, delicious treat.

12. Ham and cheese sandwich (on baguette or pretzel roll) – This is tasty simplicity at its finest. Why? Because here is what’s on the bread: butter, ham and cheese. That’s it! Who needs tomato, lettuce, mayo, onions, peppers and some sort of globby dressing. You don’t need all that on a European sandwich. Why? Because the main ingredients are of such a high quality and taste so good, that’s why! And don’t you forget it!

13. Fondue – Yes you can get this in LA (Morels @ the Grove), though the perfect fusing of cheeses along with the right kirsch vs. white wine ratio is too important to ignore. Fondue in Switzerland tastes amazing, with a smooth (not gummy), somewhat gritty consistency. It’s solely served with day old rustic bread. And it was worth the cholesterol, trust me, which is probably why I inadvertently ate this twice and have dreamed of it ever since. Enjoy it with some hoppy beer, or with a local Swiss white wine like a Fendant.

14. Raclette – You can buy this cheese at Trader Joe’s, or be invited to a Swiss person’s house for a Raclette party (this has happened to me). It’s sort of like fondue but more straight-up: there are no ingredients except CHEESE. It’s tasty. You eat it with something sturdy like potatoes or cornichons.

15. Spätzle - Literally translated from German as "little sparrow," this is a dish of tiny dumplings forced through a sieve and boiled before being tossed with butter and sometimes sautéed. (Appears in the right background in Raclette photo.)

16. International McDonald's – Whenever I’m overseas, I always stop into a local McDonald’s. Some things are the same, and almost always some things are different. Years ago in Vienna I remember a McPork sandwich, which was like a grilled chicken sandwich made with pork. Why do we have the need to cover up our pork in the U.S. with fried breading or McRib sauce? Over there you get the real deal. Now a few years ago in France I noticed more international flavors and breads brought in, with for instance an Italian burger on a ciabatta roll, and an Indian burger on a naan-like roll. Speaking of which, in Edinburgh I found an Indian twist on the snack wrap: the chicken tikka snack wrap. And in Zurich I had the pleasure of buying 6 whole, large fried “shrimps” with a mayo-based cocktail sauce and it was a nice addition.


17. Tattie scones – OMG, I’ve been dreaming of this breakfast wonder since first trying it in Belfast in 2000. As part of any respectable Irish or Scottish full breakfast, the tattie scone is simply a potato scone, looks like a pita but is heartier (at 12:00 on the plate), and is sautéed in the pan. I have no idea where to get this in Los Angeles, so I guess I’ll just have to make some myself. It sure won’t be the same, though, as enjoying it as part of a full Scottish breakfast in a sleepy pub on a chilly Edinburgh morning.

Until we eat again,

Marly

Road Trip

Ever since my first trip to Seattle I’ve been inspired by local foods, as unique menu treasures from non-ubiquitous local restaurants are hard to come by in the urban centers I’ve long lived in.

Right now I’m thinking about Seattle chef Tom Douglas’s triple coconut cream pie, from Dahlia Lounge, a dessert epiphany that I was lucky enough to experience for the first time years ago while exploring that fine food city.

The small successes you encounter in faraway restaurants are the parts you take home. Once you get back to your roost you’ll very likely share those discoveries with friends and colleagues, and if anyone hits the road themselves, if they don’t track down that wonderful place or menu item you found it’s easy to want to hurt them!

These thoughts have come to pass because a few weekends ago to ring in the new year I had the pleasure of driving up the California coast with Christy. What a wonderful reminder of why I moved to this great state. There is so much beauty to see, and it’s all so accessible.

We started in Pismo Beach with a pre-“Avatar” dinner at a local seafood spot called Steamers. My shrimp scampi was quite good, refined and flavorful and for the right price. Christy’s linguini with clams tasted great, although it took her a good 20 minutes to dig 100 tiny clams out of their shells before digging in.

The next day we couldn’t get into a sold-out Hearst Castle, so instead – since there were two full days left in the holiday weekend – we set our compass north. I imagined the map of the state in my mind, searching for a fun locale due north. Suddenly the Napa Valley exploded into my consciousness. It’s so close! And I’d wanted for a long time to visit the Oxbow Public Market, a fairly new food hall similar to the luminous Ferry Building in San Francisco.

We called en route and found out the market closed at 7:00pm, so we hauled ass. Even though we got there at 6:45pm, most of the food stalls were already closed, but that's okay. At least we got to see the place. It's nice! And this was very cool too, right next door to the market was a new branch of Taylor's Automatic Refresher—also in the Ferry Building, also in St. Helena—that fantastic local retro hamburger stand.

Next up, it was time to finally check out the Bounty Hunter, a hot wine bar that had just opened in downtown Napa back when I was taking a one-week course at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. That was in 2004, and the course was called the Professional Business of Wine. I went with the intention of seeing if this was a career path I should consider more seriously, and also thought it would be a fun way to explore Napa with my classmates.

No such luck, on both fronts:

1) I enjoyed the class, yet couldn’t wrap my head around the growing principles of vines and grapes. Then in the tasting portion of class, I couldn't shake my Kevin Zraly's Windows on the World Wine School training, which taught me to lose all pretention about wine and simply know what I like vs. what I don’t in the most general terms. Here, my classmates imagined tasting things I couldn’t imagine! They took a sip and in one wine tasted McIntosh apple and Greengage plum. They tasted fancy things in other wines like lemongrass, papaya and black pepper, even hybrid fruit like pluots. Poppycock! I tasted… grapes! Rich, jammy, bitter, tannic, dry, berry, smoky, apple, lemon, butter, caramel… in the wine. I was not able to taste Greengage plum in the wine. Come on!

2) My class was very small, with about seven people, and they didn’t care to have group activities after class. Except one lady said I could join her cadre at the then new Bounty Hunter, but it felt like a pity invite only, so I declined.

Instead I did my own thing and wandered into Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen, located, um, actually on a backstreet parallel to the main street of St. Helena. This place was wonderful, in a converted two-story house, and I grabbed a seat at the bar. The bartender was a fantasy version of a man, a guy you'd want to talk to every day from now until forever, although an hour on that evening was good enough for me. All the food I ordered tasted perfectly amazing, yet the wine business not being for me really hit home that night when my appetizer order of a pan-sautéed artichoke with a glass of Trimbach Gewurtraminer to start was rejected by the bartender because “the artichoke is going to kill that wine.” I love sautéed artichokes, I adore Trimbach’s Gewurtraminer which is rarely on a restaurant menu by the glass, and I did not want to annoy this handsome bartender. But I held my ground and ordered it anyway. Of course he was right, as were the teenage weaned-on-wine busboys who giggled when I went ahead with the order and painfully realized my mistake. It’s ok though, my basic grilled chicken BLT with spiced fries was the best sandwich I’d had in years and years. So flavorful! And the campfire pie for dessert was so original, so incredible. Sure I lived in the great restaurant town of New York then, but finding a place like Cindy’s there was next to impossible because restaurants like that are only found on the road.

The next day after class I was invited by a cute blonde classmate to join him in Calistoga, up Rt. 29 by bus, to kick around a bit before he headed off to a softball game with his Calistoga friends. We perused a market in that town while discussing cheeses and local potato chips, bought fun sodas and finally walked to his friend’s place after openly dreaming of owning our own wine stores. This was the kind of post-class day I’d been looking for, though it ended too soon. He and his friends had to go! They told me to hop in the jeep and they’d drive me back to St. Helena, I could have dinner while they practiced, then they told me where to find them later to watch the game.

We hopped into the jeep with the top down and sailed south on the Silverado Trail, passing field after gorgeous field of grapes, where they and their vines lived in peace. The sun was shining on pretty green landscape as I’d never seen. When the guys dropped me off at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher I was pretty happy since they’d talked it up a lot and I’d never heard of it. Turns out the jeep driver used to work there, and he went up to the counter and ordered for me before waving goodbye and driving off with my classmate. My cheeseburger with sweet potato fries and a glass of red wine were not only of the highest quality, they were also on the house. I wandered over to the softball game about an hour later, and the experience was right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. This world was so serene and strange. I loved it, but it was also a bit lonely since I was there on my own and at this point doubted my ability to make a living there in the Napa Valley wine world (Greengage plum??).

So a few weeks ago, I was taken back to all this as Christy and I drove to dinner at the Bounty Hunter, although we didn't end up eating there and that's okay with me. See our trip to the wine country was an impulse and we never expected to find ourselves up there dressed in jeans and sweatshirts. From the moment we entered the Bounty Hunter bar there were looks and stares from the help, and it wasn't pleasant. We left without sitting down and drove up Rt. 29 to find another place, anything, and we drove past the Oakville Grocery, past the standby restaurants Brix and Mustards, past the flagship Dean & Deluca, and past all the wineries with their trees still wrapped in tiny glowing Christmas lights. We passed a new place I hadn’t seen before called the Rutherford Grill, from the Houston’s folks which I will plan to visit some time in the future. And finally we came upon the original Taylor’s Automatic Refresher, at which I’d had that delicious gourmet burger meal in 2004, and once you hit that you know you’re in St. Helena.

St. Helena was a bit too sleepy at 9:00pm on a Saturday night, so we decided to keep driving for our dinner. In the car I pointed out where Cindy’s was, along with the expansive Beringer winery, and finally we drove through the line of old oak trees that lead up to the majestic Culinary Institute of America. Five minutes later we arrived in the quaint western-style town of Calistoga, and it looked so charming at night that we decided to dine at the lovely Calistoga Inn.

Our repast complete, we drove through Healdsburg at around 10:30pm, home of the Kendall Jackson Winery tasting room. What an amazing town this was! Hadn’t been that north before. It was late, so we decided to come back the next day to walk around. The next morning we drove through California’s southernmost redwood forest park. We proceded south along the foggy Pacific coast winding down through Mendocino. The coastline sure is a sight to see.

Back in Healdsburg we ventured into the Kendall Jackson tasting room because KJ's Vintner's Reserve Chardonnay was the first wine I tasted and loved as an adult. We sampled some interesting wines not available in Los Angeles stores, served to us by "Uncle Bill." Throughout the tasting I threw out some wine facts from my wine school days and Uncle Bill was impressed. Maybe I was too hard on myself in 2004. Maybe it was a matter of simple intimidation, since the people in Napa seemed to know so much more than me. Now I realize I know enough to get by in that world; the key is to forget all pretention and just keep on tasting.

Now it was Sunday early afternoon and time to head back to Los Angeles. We drove south and decided to have lunch in Hayward, California, just south of Oakland, to hit up Buffalo Bill’s Brewery. I've had their excellent beer in LA, and imagined lunch at the brewery would be an amazing foodie adventure. Actually the food was kinda bleh, but let’s face it, we were there for the beer. Pity they were out of their fantastic orange blossom cream ale. Instead we ordered the renowned pumpkin ale (still have some bottles in my fridge from October) and that was good yet it was the unfiltered Hayward Hefe on tap that rocked our world. For a repeat of that experience, we will indeed have to drive back up to Hayward.

Which we may get to do this weekend. We’re heading up to Oakland to explore the foodie-dom of that little gem of a town. Ok, it’s a big and sometimes rough city, however its growing food offerings should not be ignored, and there are little restaurants popping up that I'm fairly confident don’t exist in Los Angeles. Yep in order to find those, we’ll have to hit the road again.

Chocolate Show

A chocolate show is a wonderful thing. Imagine your favorite thing to eat in the whole world and there's a convention about it, with every booth offering free samples of that thing. All people should go to a show featuring their favorite food once in their lives, yet unfortunately not all foods get their own show. Bacon probably wouldn't have its own show. Candy gets its own show sometimes. Chocolate has been getting its own show for years now. My first chocolate show was in November 1998 in New York, when I was a grad student in the Food Studies Master's degree program at NYU.

The Food Studies department posted a notice for volunteers to help out at the popular New York Chocolate Show at Soho's regal Puck Building. The time required to serve was a full Saturday, and we put on white coats and assisted a certain famous French pastry chef during his live chocolate demonstrations. His desserts and cakes are always impressive, however this chef treated us volunteers with disdain that day. I think that's when I learned it's definitely fun to volunteer at a chocolate show, but it's even more fun to be a patron.

Years later I received a complimentary ticket for the same show through the restaurant company I worked at, since one of our pastry chefs was a featured guest. Seeing the show as a human instead of a volunteer led to a higher level of satisfaction all around, as I was no longer chained to one corner of the room and could now explore freely. This was all good with the exception that I did not heed this warning:

**Warning: Taste samples sporadically, not constantly, at a chocolate show or you will have extreme headaches**

(Heck I still wouldn't take that advice. Never ask me to.)

There was another chocolate show I attended with my old friend Chris probably around 2002 after we returned from a trip to Paris. But before I talk about that, let me mention that good chocolate is easy to find in Paris! Chris took me to Angelina’s for their luxe hot chocolate poured from a porcelain pot, and we visited Michael Chaundon’s shop near the Eiffel Tower for cream-filled chocolates so fresh they must always be refrigerated.

Right, so it was after Paris that Chris and I visited a New York chocolate show in a more intimate setting than the Puck Building, in some big gallery in Chelsea. There were some marvelous products at this show, including white chocolate bark with cherries, apricots and pistachios from France, painted artisinal bon bons from Japan and new flavors of Van Gogh chocolate vodka from The Netherlands. And yes, samples were plentiful!

Now the weirdest chocolate show experience I ever had was in October 2005 in Sweden. I happened upon a crazy coincidence one day while researching an upcoming visit to Scandinavia. The purpose of the visit was two-fold: to taste real Danish pastries in Copenhagen, and to visit my Catherine-Deneuve-look-alike friend Kirsten in Oslo (we met at a New York barbecue when she offered me a piece of the lovely Swedish candy called Daim).

After the flights were booked, I did a random online search for chocolate in Sweden. No, Sweden wasn't on the itinerary per se, but I planned to visit the Swedish town of Malmo for a few hours since it was the most accessible Swedish city near Copenhagen and I couldn’t eat Danish ALL the time so a short train trip to the most accessible part of Sweden made sense! So, the online search for "Sweden chocolate" resulted in a wonderful coincidence. During the time of my visit, there was going to be a CHOCOLATE SHOW IN MALMO, SWEDEN!

The 30-minute train ride to Malmo went quickly and in the train station I bought a few Swedish chocolate bars for the wrappers (including the exquisitely wrapped Japonais bar), and promptly ignored the tons of licorice for sale (it’s a thing in Scandinavia, that licorice). Then with purpose and anticipation I walked, a good 30-minute walk, down the cold streets of Malmo to the old brick factory where the chocolate show would be. I found it! That felt awesome.

There was a short line at the door, and the ticket taker was a very attractive Swedish man. (Did I ever tell you about the inherent attractiveness of Scandinavian people? It’s amazing, and as I would soon find out in Oslo, the Norwegians are just as attractive as the Swedes!) The Swedish man was in jeans and a big burly gray sweater, the kind of sweater that belongs at a cozy lodge with you and your (plural) hot toddies by the fire. He was blond, J Crew model-like but without a drip of pretention, and he smiled at me when I asked him if he spoke English.

He nicely explained that the chocolate show ticket price was something like 25 euros. Ack! True I did come to Malmo for this chocolate show (as well as to visit Malmo's "famous International Market Square" down the street), but 25 euros compared to the $15 or even free admission I was used to for larger shows in New York felt like too much here. I mean, it’s not that I needed to go this show. I wanted to, if possible.

I explained my situation to the handsome Swede, that I worked for a restaurant company and loved chocolate and went to many food shows and didn’t really need to see this one after all, thanks anyway. "Where did you travel from?" he asked. I said "Besides Copenhagen? I'm from New York City." Well that’s all it took for him to melt like a big piece of white chocolate in the sun. He lived in New York City once too! And he really wanted to talk to me about that. But what can you do, people kept interrupting, you know, to buy tickets for the chocolate show.

This man graciously decided, under the circumstances, that I should be able to go to the show for free. Really? Wow thank you so much...I accepted the offer and went upstairs. The chocolate show was 1/30th the size of any show I’d been to. It was extremely intimate and lovely, and I deftly walked around the three little rooms in food-show-grazing style, popping through people and accepting the few samples offered. That said, I think I finished the show in 10 minutes. A little embarrassing, yes, but stalling was difficult due to the crowds so all I could really do was leave.

Back downstairs he was surprised to see me so soon! I sincerely thanked him and then he wanted to hear what I thought about the show and wished to continue talking. So did I, then the admission line suddenly grew and he had to take tickets, even though he was flustered that this meant we had to stop chatting. I said “Listen I’m going to walk to the International Market Square which should be a few blocks that way and then will come back.” Relieved, he said okay. I walked a few blocks to that famous square, and immediately noticed that whoever wrote the promotional benefits of visiting Malmo and included the International Market Square as one of those benefits was high on aquavit. There was absolutely nothing to see, no special shops or restaurants or takeout places. The square was desolate, depressing, and kinda closed. Maybe because it was a Sunday? Anyway my little side trip to the square lasted about 30 seconds and then I turned back.

On the walk back to the chocolate show I started to imagine what would happen if I lingered to chat up the chocolate show man. Well, we could have an adventure...he clearly wanted to talk more, so I could invite him to visit me in Copenhagen where I was staying for three more days and he would take the 30-minute train ride from Malmo and meet me for dinner and we would enjoy each other’s company and have drinks and then because I was a single female traveler alone in Scandinavia with a hotel room he might expect more and that might be too risky so..., so, hmm. Boy was he a lovely, intelligent and generous man, however my mind raced in über-precautionary mode. I had no idea what to do.

When I got back to the old brick factory I stopped on the sidewalk and waved hello to him while he was exchanging money frantically with customers. He was very happy to see that I returned. I stood and waited. I got nervous. I imagined a conversation about meeting up later but with no expectations. I decided it was too weird to explain my vulnerabilities to a total stranger. Resolved to eat my dinner alone that night, I got his attention, pointed towards the train station and mouthed the words “I have to go,” then walked away watching him watch me, his frustration clear as he tried to catch me but in the end was trapped taking chocolate show money.

I regret that I did not stay to get to know this person, who only knew me for a few minutes before sneaking me into his chocolate show. What had I been so worried about? He wanted to talk to someone from New York, to reminisce about his old home. Who knows what else, but that at least was real. It’s one of those things where in this day-and-age of Facebook I wish I knew his name because then I could “friend” him and explain why I up and left without a word that day in October 2005 when he worked at the Malmo chocolate show. Nah, I don't think people remember things like I do.

Soon after I was reminded of some lessons: 1) Don't make assumptions about or decisions for other people because you have no idea what they're thinking, and 2) Don't think so much all the time, just go with life when it happens. At least right after seeing the show I had a moment to thank the man for his generosity and tell him how much I enjoyed it.

I haven’t been to a chocolate show since, unless you call the visions of chocolate dancing around my mind each day a chocolate show.

Until we eat again,
Marly

Bad Planet Marly, so here's a recipe too

Dear PM Readers,

As you may have noticed, my usual lapse in writing has gone on over 2 months this time. I am very sorry! There are excuses, but I won't make them. Instead, how about I say that sooner than you can whip a bowl of heavy cream, I'll get crackin' on a new post.

In the meantime, mark your calendar to see "Julie & Julia," what looks to be a great foodie flick opening on August 7th. It is based on the non-fiction best-seller of a listless administrative assistant in Queens, NY named Julie Powell, who decides to change her fate by cooking every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year while simultaneously blogging about it! She was actually a food-blogging pioneer, and adorably called her blog readers "Bleaders." Fantastic.

This feat did change Ms. Powell's fate, and it's a great read. The movie too promises to include cameos of some food world biggie's, including a secret cameo near the end of the film by Frank Bruni, the chief restaurant critic of The New York Times. The irony here is that Mr. Bruni agreed to the film cameo knowing full well that he was stepping down from his post--which required him to keep a secret identity for many years--the same time the movie was being released! I love that.

And so, as penance for the lapse in posts (ok so maybe this has inadvertently been a mini-post), I offer you a mini-recipe. It struck my fancy while flipping through some women's magazine at the dentist office or something. Looks tasty! And if the thought of instant white rice turns you off, just substitute any other kind. Another thought is to take these flavors and incorporate them into a more formal risotto. Yep, now I'm hungry.

Creamy Lemon, Mushroom, Shrimp & Rice
courtesy of Success Rice

1 bag Success rice
1 tbsp. garlic-flavored oil
16 oz. white mushrooms (pre-sliced, 6 cups)
1 8 oz. tub onion & chive cream cheese
1 lb. cooked, peeled & deveined medium shrimp (40)
2 cups pre-rinsed baby spinach
¼ cup water
1 tbsp. lemon juice
½ cup shredded Parmesan

Prepare rice. Heat oil in nonstick pan. Add mushrooms and sauté for 6 minutes until golden. Stir in cream cheese until melted. Add shrimp, spinach and water. Cook until heated, 2 minutes. Fold in rice, lemon, more water if needed to keep creamy. Top with Parmesan. Serves 4 (or a super hungry 1).

Until we meet again,
Marly

It Is Happening Again

Ok imagine you're a baseball fan, say a Yankees, Dodgers or D-Backs fan, and one day the rules change so that every other day a new stadium for your team opens in the team's (and your) town and official major league players are added in for each stadium so lots of games end up being added to the season schedule for each team. This would probably result in your being very excited that there are many more games to see each week, each night even, and this would spur you on to see all the games in your now bigger baseball club but then you'd start to think about it realistically and wonder, how will you ever have enough time or money to go see them all?

Welcome to my world. I'm a foodie. And this is the hell I'm again living in.

Things were under control in Los Angeles when I got here in 2006. Being a food lover/obsessive is actually one of the reasons I moved here from that other city you've probably heard me talk about, New York.

Huh, you say? Why would that be? Moving from one to the other because of food? Doesn't sound logical in this case really, especially since then you'd expect me to move from New York to Chicago or San Francisco, not Los Angeles! Okay let me put letters to visual paper so you can hear me...

Living in New York City is like living within the churning and expanding contents of an over-reactive petri dish. Things keep growing and moving and you're living inside of it, merged and in sync with the molecules in the dish every breathing moment. While it's exciting to be in such a volcanic environment, it's rather exhausting to be growing and moving all the time but you must stay with it, you have no choice!

For instance, art and culture were rather set in NY, with X amount of museums in X neighborhoods. Then came Chelsea, with its galleries and oh then came Williamsburg, with its many hipster galleries. Then outdoor art hit Central Park with The Gates, and those paper-maché cows and then baseball team Statues of Liberty on every major street corner. Art was everywhere, in more and more places, so if you liked art there was suddenly no rest for you.

The same can't really be said for baseball, but it can be said for theater, and it certainly can be said for bars and restaurants. As a resident living in the supernova also known as Brooklyn, I wasn't a foodie for no good reason. My job then was to know what was going on in the city's food world due to my employment at a large restaurant firm. A foodie job for a foodie is a great fit, however when the world around you is exploding into a new bar and/or restaurant every single day, all of which sound amazing and worthy of my hard-earned cash, it simply becomes an exhaustive effort to keep up with all the new places to check out.

So I left. Not just for that reason but it was suddenly no longer fun to explore every new place, read and jot down notes every week from NY Magazine (on Monday) and Time Out Magazine (on Thursday) and the New York Times (on Wednesday), plus walk past very exciting fresh cubbyhole spots with unique menus yet with no time to go in so you merely look at the menus and want it all but can't have it all.

Los Angeles is home to wonderful low-key ethnic food, and some high-end Beverly Hills mover-shaker places that I couldn't really care about. So upon landing on these shores my foodie needs subsided naturally, and my brain reveled in the change since it was so tired. With that in mind, LA and I got along just fine.

There were a handful of places I frequented when I got here, and slowly other ones sauntered my way. Actually, while living here I've experienced the lost joy of being a repeat customer! Back east, that was close to impossible. Perish the thought that I was ever able to visit a favorite haunt more than once or twice a year. It simply didn't work. In LA from day one, my foodie driver's seat was on cruise-control for the first time in years and I flourished. One time I even went to a place-of-the-moment three times in a week, and 14 times within several months! New Yorkers, can you imagine? Okay also, I mean sure, having restaurant variety is why I don't live in Tulsa, but must we all go crazy learning about the next great new place every single day?

So here I was enjoying LA, gingerly discovering new places, and eventually, admittedly, a little frustrated by the lack of great food if you want a reasonably priced sit-down meal. Then, recently, I noticed a change. It started slow, and has picked up a sudden momentum. Perhaps due to a backlash from Angeleno restaurateurs resulting from LA's first Michelin Guide a few years ago having a very low number of star-rated restaurants, or perhaps just because it was my dumb luck, I recently realized it is happening again.

What is happening? I'll tell you what... that this month one of Gourmet magazine's cover stories is "Explore America's most exciting Chinese Food" and it's an article about the San Gabriel Valley, a sprawling Asian neighborhood in LA County. What about this month's Bon Appétit magazine, a theme issue called "Best of the USA" with the article "Food's Golden State," about California's bounty including where to find LA's best taco truck (see pg 3). Note: In the same issue is this article, "A Scene Grows in Brooklyn," about Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and seeing it brought up a momentary combo of hypersensitivity and guilt about all the Burg places I hadn't visited yet, a knee-jerk reaction from my not-so-defunct-after-all New Yorker peripatetic foodie brain.

See it's one thing to read "Best LA Restaurants" articles in LA Magazine, the LA Times blog or from the local Tasting Table emails. It's quite another to start seeing articles appear about the food of LA, my proudly safe haven of the relaxed quasi-foodie lifestyle, in national food magazines.

The energy is building here in a way it hasn't yet, and I suppose it's inevitable. Now, I fear, my list of Los Angeles bars and restaurants to visit has grown exponentially on this blog and that old familiar mind exhaustion is setting in. It's a pressure, like the summer movie season, where you know you want to see all those movies or the list will pile up and if you don't see as many as possible now you never will. Or it's like baseball, if each major league team kept adding more teams and players like I said.

How does a person keep up you say? Is there a way to Tivo a restaurant? No. There isn't. You have to get off your ass and go. I hear you, it's definitely a good thing too, to watch the bar finally rise on interesting restaurant choices, food quality and expectations in this sunny city. And of course I love going out, but back east isn't that how I gained weight and got into debt in the first place? Then subsequently lost that weight and paid off that debt while living out here? Sigh.

Cake Story

With the exception of pudding, I have not eaten a decadent chocolate dessert in a while, and that’s too long for someone like me. That's why recently I’ve been thinking more often than usual about chocolate cake. And that’s what brought me back to a tale from the Broadway days, about really great chocolate cake, and the meanest boss ever.

Flashback

In the early 1990's I worked in Times Square at a Broadway theatrical advertising agency. Lucky for me my account group had the best client in the office. His name will not be posted here due to the efficacy of Google search engines. I will, however, tell you that he is from the United Kingdom and there is a tribute DVD about him on Amazon.com (click here for link) that I wish I owned. This post will refer to him as (code name) Seth. He is, in my opinion and many others, one of the world’s great theatrical producers and visionaries. And in spite of his success and the global popularly of his productions which include "Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Misérables," he is a highly respected, brilliant, and good man.

My first few months at the agency happened to coincide with the opening of Seth’s next great show, "Miss Saigon." For some reason this show is usually the show people see less of than the more-famous others, but to me "Miss Saigon" has always been my favorite of the popular trinity. This could be due to several reasons. Was it because it was the first Broadway show I worked on as an account person? Or because I felt more of an emotional impact watching this show than the others? Or was it because of the show's controversial nature, in one part due to its then-highest ticket price in town for front-row mezzanine seats, which I got to sit in for no charge, allowing me to be at neck-level with the swirling blades of the working helicopter? Or, was it because of cake?

Whatever the case, I loved that show! Working on the advertising and promotion for it before opening night was a thrill. So one day my group was meeting about "Miss Saigon" promotional strategies. My boss -- who we will call for the purposes of this post Barbara, and who in the privacy of my mind I usually referred to as Hitler (for very good reasons that won’t be mentioned in this post) -- asked the group for opening night present ideas. It’s the tradition to send gifts to the people putting on the big show, and the norm is Champagne, an engraved trinket or the like. Seth had received so many opening night gifts in his long career that Barbara thought we should think out of the box on this one. That's when I came up with a pretty good idea.

"How about a cake?" I told the group that on the upper east side there’s a fantastic cake shop called Creative Cakes. I lived nearby and saw it on some TV show some time in the 1980's. It’s famous because they make cakes that look like anything! You know, like a 3-dimensional Empire State Building or a Monopoly board. At the top of their game, they'll pretty much recreate whatever item you ask as a cake, with precision of design and color to boot. The only rule is that the cake itself must be chocolate with butter cream icing. No exceptions! This place had been on my mind for years, even though my microscopic salary wouldn’t permit me access to such a cake. But an opening night present paid for by the company, that I could do.

My suggestion was to have the cake shop create a delicious replica of the "Miss Saigon" poster and give it to Seth. As I spoke I took short breaths for fear that the wrath of Barbara would cut me if this was the stupidest idea ever. She loved it! She said it could be my project and I was thrilled. The poster (see photo above) was simple in some regards yet very complex with reference to the logo, which was a sort of triple-entendre using calligraphy. First your eye sees a generic Asian letter character. Then you see a girl’s face as part of the character, and then the character reveals itself to look like a helicopter, superimposed over a rising sun. Talk about a challenging thing to recreate in icing! But I had faith that Creative Cakes could do it.

As the meeting was about to adjourn and all felt well, my boss Barbara belatedly resumed her normal, more psycho personality, and she halted the meeting adjournment with a loud “Wait!” Then she looked me in the eye. Her voice had all the dank seriousness of Vincent Price introducing a horror film when she said, “There’s only one way this will work. You must make the bakery match the poster color… EXACTLY!…or Seth will HATE it.” (Cue to bats flying out of brain and into the Manhattan sky. Scene.) Barbara continued, “Go to the art department and get the PMS chip for the poster and bring it with you to the bakery. Tell them you need ICING samples sent over so we can pick an EXACT MATCH. IF they can’t match that color exactly from the poster IT’S NOT WORTH IT and we’ll do something ELSE! Don't forget to GET SAMPLES!”

Ok so to bring you up to speed on the term PMS if you don’t already know, PMS stands for Pantone Matching System. The system enables printers anywhere in the world to have the ability to print an exact color match on anything being printed, for an extra fee. Things like posters, flyers, food packages, etc., and usually branded items where color cohesiveness is important. It's why the Coke logo is always the same color when you see it. (Coke used to have a PMS color for its trademark red, at one point dubbed “Coke red,” so when printers all over the world made Coke cans and ads and logos, there would be no misunderstanding of what that red should be. Now they have a different system but click here for an interesting note about the PMS status of “Coke red” from Coke.)

And so, the Pantone company prints books of every PMS color, that you can tear into little chips for sending to a printer. People pay good money for PMS colors to be used, because it’s like an insurance policy. When my agency inherited the London-designed "Miss Saigon" poster, it came with a PMS color attached for that maroon background. What Barbara was saying was I had to force a baker to adhere to this PMS color or else. Hmm. Really? I wanted to say to my boss, “Ya see to me, Seth is very important but also very nice. Don’t you think he’ll be pleasantly pleased to receive such a unique gift, that'll look just like the poster? Do you really think he’ll be MAD and REJECT THE CAKE on the opening night of his latest mega-million dollar baby if the ICING IS NOT A PERFECT PMS COLOR MATCH!!?!?!?!?!?” You know I couldn’t say this, for fear of Barbara’s death eye (which I actually mastered and used against her in later years). Powerless to say anything to the contrary, I simply said meek as a mouse, “Ok.”

Quaking through the doorway of this most famous cake shop, I feared they would very well throw me out upon hearing this crazy request. But I did it, sheepishly approaching the counter with my "Miss Saigon" poster and "Miss Saigon" PMS maroon-ish color chip in hand. And guess what I learned? Since the shop was a place for the elite of NY, and located on the snooty upper east side, it was used to rich people making demands. That was their business. (Like the person who spent $2000 for a cake that had to look exactly like her poodle for the, ahem, poodle’s birthday party.) And thus the baker did not laugh at me, but he also didn't smile. He simply told me that in order to match the PMS chip he’d have to charge extra, due to his need to create several color samples, which he would send over to my office in a few days, and if we didn’t like the samples he’d try again, and again, until we picked one. Oh good, I knew then that I would get to live another day. Since money was no object in this case, it was a deal.

A few days later I expected our messenger service to send over a few small cups of icing for us to review. To my joyful surprise, the baker sent over (insert Oprah’s voice here) THREE MINI CAKE SAM-PLES!! I'm talking a good 5"x5" square cake, done up with icing three times! And damn if the baker didn’t do a spot-on job of matching that color. When Barbara walked over I held my breath, so afraid she’d reject them all due to her evil madness but lo and behold, she liked one. Big collective amen in our minds. Then the heavens sent more blessings after Barbara approved the color on one of the cakes, because that's when she allowed me and my fellow plebes to eat them. (It was a moment straight out of "Oliver!") Yes, after all those years of unrequited Creative Cake dreams, after fantasizing of what that chocolate cake with butter cream icing would taste like, the cake was mine and I didn't have to take out a personal loan to get it! That was probably one of the happiest food moments in my life, and the cake did not let me down. It was such a fine piece of cake too, a very moist and delicious buttery sugary icing-y chocolate cake.

When I called the baker and told him that one of the colors was approved, he finally let slip a little attitude, sighed a huge diva exhale and thanked God above. Sure there are the elite rich in New York who order his cakes, but he confessed no one had ever brought in a PMS color chip for the icing. I mean, seriously, it’s a fucking cake. After people eat it, it’s gone.

We had the cake delivered to our office so we could see it and take some photos. Then a few of us painstakingly carried it through the crowds of Times Square over to the stage door of the Broadway Theater, right before curtain on opening night. Seth, I heard, loved the cake, which indeed turned out to be an exact replica of the poster, and color. I would still bet money that on Seth’s brilliant Broadway opening night for "Miss Saigon," the last thing on his mind was going to be whether or not the icing on a cake was a poster's perfect color match.

Oh well, whether you’re an office slave in a big agency in NY dealing with silly demands, or just on a diet years later in LA, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do. At other times, it's ok not to, so tonight I think I will be eating cake.

Until we eat again,
Marly