Absurdity Checkpoint

Winter wonderland

Written by Chaz on 15 May 2012

My mother and I took a quick trip over President’s Day to Maine, one of my favorite places in the world. I have visited Acadia National Park every year of my life, visiting even before my first birthday, and it is like a second home. One of the things that excited me most about living in Boston was how close I would be. So for my first long weekend, it seemed like a logical trip to make. My mother flew into Boston from Philadelphia, and we rented a car and drove from here. We stayed with friends of ours who are lucky enough to live there.

When we made the plans, I assumed we would have snow and do winter things like snowshoe and cross-country ski. Though it was still pretty cold, there was zero snow, thanks to our very mild winter. At first I found this very disappointing, but after we stopped at L.L.Bean in Freeport and bought the poor man’s version of crampons, I realized we were actually lucky. We were able to do almost all the hiking we do in the summer. The only obstacle was that most of the park roads are closed.

We arrived late Friday night and were up early Saturday to hit the mountains in the short sunlight. We parked on Route 233 by the padlocked gate to the park’s loop road and hiked up the road the base of the Cadillac Mountain North Ridge Trail. The first mile or so of the trail was nearly entirely a sheet of ice, but despite my mother’s fearful protests, we made it safely to a beautiful view.

We made the most of our short three days, driving around the island to our favorite haunts, catching pizza and a movie at my favorite movie theater ever, and a fancier dinner at Red Sky in Southwest Harbor. We did an impressive amount outside, too — a bunch of sightseeing and small hiking after our trek on Cadillac.

I did one other longer hike the morning before we left, summiting Pemetic Mountain. It was a very different feeling than in the summer, even though the trail was very usable. I didn’t meet a single soul along the way and had to park at another padlocked gate and hike in from there. Knowing I was one of very few people to be seeing the views from the top made them even more special. Though it was cold, it was a very clear, blue day, and I could see islands and mountains for miles around.

As we left Mount Desert Island to drive home, we took a detour over to Schoodic Peninsula, the only section of Acadia on the mainland, across Frenchman Bay to the east. The peninsula, which is ringed by a six-mile loop road that makes a great bike ride in the summer and is plowed in the winter, offers sweeping views back toward the bald mountains on Mount Desert. Though we did not stay long, we felt like we had made the most of what the park had to offer in the middle of February.

We turned south, and the sun began to wane as we drove. The orange-pink light looked beautiful across the frozen surface of Lake St. George.

We capped off our trip with a dinner stop in Portland, where I had found us J’s Oyster, a seafood restaurant right on the old wharf. We each enjoyed some local brews before I dove into the seafood bouillabaisse, filled with everything the Maine ocean has to offer, and my mother tucked into something a bit more unusual. Apparently it is agains the law to sell scallops on the half-shell in the state of Maine — they have to be shucked on the boat — but our waitress has the one exception currently granted anywhere in the state. So my mother enjoyed her scallops, which had been baked into puff pastry.

The weekend was incredibly relaxing. For me, Acadia is a place where I can immediately unwind and recharge. It was also the most time I had spent outside in a couple months, and I returned to Boston rejuvenated and ready to go back to work.

Posted in Maine | No Responses »
Tags: Family, Food, One with nature, Sunsets, Views

Wat can be found in hidden corners of NYC

Written by Emmy on 10 May 2012

Just as the checkpoint has spread its way up the east coast, so have its friends. Following our time with newfound friends Fred and Carrie, we were able to catch up with a mix of friends from all places over Sunday brunch, every New Yorker’s favorite activity.

We gathered roommates, high school, college and study abroad friends and met up for a classy mid-morning meal of excessive amounts of coffee, fresh banana walnut bread, several classic brunch favorites, eggs stewed with tomato, and an unusual offering of breakfast pizza.

The brunch itself was good, but it was really most notable because we were able to bring so many friends together at one time in one place.

We spent the afternoon catching up and playing competitive card games, and preparing for an evening adventure. Since returning from our summer jaunt to Thailand, we’ve experimented with all varieties of Thai take-out cuisine in our respective cities. But nothing quite measures up, and honestly we suspected nothing outside the borders of old Siam could. Los Angeles has its own Thai Town and as an east coast elitist, I assumed New York had to have one too. We just had not yet looked in the right place.

Sure enough, 45 minutes away from lower Manhattan, a winding ride on the R train, is a little Thai enclave in Elmhurst, Queens. The neighborhood is so authentic as to include metro New York’s only operational wat. And as we learned on the streets of Bangkok, where there’s a wat, there’s a way, and usually an impromptu restaurant or two.

The title of most authentic Thai restaurant in Elmhurst is seemingly a competitive one. It’s a topic that has been debated by the best of New York’s food writers and at least for now, the honor rests with a small family-run restaurant on bustling Woodside Avenue. As one New York Times food critic wrote, “I knew Ayada was a serious Thai restaurant when I started weeping at my table.”

We had company on our journey in the form of Chaz’s high school friend Kim and her boyfriend Bing because we had not seen them yet — and also we thought Kim’s Thai heritage might come in handy when deciphering the menu. A perk of bringing a bigger group meant more ordering. But on our walk to the restaurant, Kim and Bing commented that they were not that hungry. We decided that would not impact our decisions.

We started with a fairly aggressive number of appetizers based on food-critic guidance and recommendations from Kim. The long parade included a papaya salad, fish cakes, crab rolls, chicken larb salad and E-sarn sausage. Before you judge, there were four of us and we just sampled. (Sort of.)

But to be a little more discriminating: The papaya salad pictured above nearly blew our heads off in true Thai style (and was still just as good the next morning out of its plastic container). The crab rolls were a fascinating and unusual composed item. With an inside of crab and pork and an outside of crispy tofu, the rolls were definitely unusual, and also very delicious. We wrapped the E-sarn in pieces of lettuce with onion, chili peppers and peanuts, in a style somewhat reminiscent of betel leaves.

The fish cakes and chicken larb were my least favorites… the former was a little too bland compared to the other items on the table. The larb had a little bit of a gritty texture, and as far as composed salads go, just gets me less excited than shiny, spicy, brightly-colored papaya.

We were nearly full when the main courses arrived, but that’s irrelevant when there’s a Thai feast on the table. We ordered two of my favorite dishes, both of which were completed to perfection at Ayada.

Pad see ew is one of the simplest Thai dishes to prepare — something we learned at the hands of Big Mama — but that doesn’t mean it’s always done well. The dish is simply composed of rice noodles, Chinese broccoli and in this case, chicken. But the secret lies in the sauce, a delicate balance of black soy, sweet chili and several other critical items that I sadly do not remember from my one day of pad see ew expertise. Thankfully, the chefs at Ayada did have that list handy.

The other winning item on the menu was the penang curry. My occasional objection to curries is that they are too liquidy. Penang is my personal favorite because it is spicier and thicker than the typical curry, meaning it sticks more to the protein but still provides a big oomph in flavor. We ordered ours with chicken and it was delightful.

We chose a third entree at the suggestion of the New York Times — chinese broccoli with crispy pork. I was interested in the dish for the broccoli. The dish was spicy and flavorful, but just didn’t do as much for me as the others. I might have been more into it with a different protein — I could see it working well with tofu — but that’s a dish for another day.

I did not actually even try to the other entree on the table, but that was largely because I was so full by the time it even reached my side of the table. Plus it was the most daunting looking: spicy frogs’ legs ordered by Bing. I’m not saying I would be unwilling to try them… there were just several other things I wanted to get to first.

By the time the entrees had all been cleared, I felt like I could barely move. Conveniently, most Thai desserts feature the two foods I like least — milk and bananas. However, everyone else seemed to really enjoy the palette cleanser of fried bananas with ice cream, the sweet ending to a fantastic meal.

Ayada provided the most Thai food I’ve had outside of Thailand. And compared to a 24-hour journey to Bangkok, a 45-minute train to Queens is definitely something I can do on a more regular basis.

Posted in New York City | No Responses »
Tags: Culinary odyssey, Ethnic eats, Friends

Put a bird on New York

Written by Chaz on 6 May 2012

As has been discussed extensively before, Emmy and I think the show Portlandia is pretty great. It’s clever, funny and catchy. But one of the biggest reasons we love it is the relationship between the two actors who star in the show, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. It’s very clear that they’re best friends who are having a really good time making something together.

“We would email a link [of our sketch-comedy videos] to our friends, but they were mostly for us. It was very understated and silly, and we were just sort of reveling in the absurd.” — Carrie Brownstein to NPR

Reveling in the absurd mostly for our own selves is essentially what Emmy and I do on this blog, so we naturally feel some kinship to Fred and Carrie, who, even though we’ve never met them, feel like our really good friends. So when Fred and Carrie announced that they were taking Portlandia on tour, I immediately emailed Emmy and told her to get tickets for the New York show, promising that I would find a way to be there.

We actually attended two Portlandia events in one day. The first was a panel discussion with Fred and Carrie at the Paley Center for Media. I had never heard of the center, but it seemed like a pretty neat media organization.

The moderator left a lot to be desired — she didn’t really get the pair talking about anything that mattered, and considering that we were at a center for media, it seemed like a missed opportunity to ask searching questions about their contribution to pop culture. But we were still in awe of being in their presence, and during the question and answer session at the end, Emmy asked them a question that we have frequently pondered ourselves: What makes your friendship different from other friendships you have? Carrie called it the hardest question they have ever gotten.

Seeing the two of them in person was just about everything we had imagined it would be. And the afternoon event was just an appetizer, to use a technical food-blog term.

After the panel, we walked over to Pure Thai Cookhouse, which Emmy and I had visited once before when it had a different name thanks to a recommendation from our most reliable source for everything under the sun. At first, we just ordered curry puffs and a papaya salad with salted blue crab, because we were just having a snack, really. But we were still a bit peckish afterwards, and we were intrigued by the sound of pad kee moa with calamari.

Though the curry puffs were state of the art, both of the other two dishes were lackluster. This doesn’t speak very well of our food blogger credentials, but we were literally unable to figure out how to eat the crab in the papaya salad, and the texture of the calamari was just a bit off for our taste in the noodle dish.

We retreated to Emmy’s apartment to rest up for our evening, and took the subway down to the Bowery Ballroom for Fred and Carrie’s evening performance. It was, essentially, a live version of their sketch comedy television show — they joked, they sang, they told stories, and they were all around awesome.

Fred and Carrie also welcomed Kyle MacLachlan, who played Dale Cooper on Twin Peaks and plays the mayor of Portland on Portlandia, and jammed out on the Portland theme song that the Portlandia version of themselves wrote at the mayor’s behest.

And they dressed up as two of our favorites characters from the show — feminist bookstore owners Toni and Candace, who are more exclusive than inclusive in their attempts to create a safe space for women. At this point, we were just about losing ourselves with delight.

But perhaps the moment most relevant to us came during a slideshow of old pictures of themselves, including an adorable one of the two of them. They talk a lot about how they live on opposite sides of the country, Carrie in Portland and Fred in New York, so they need a project to keep them together. This resonates a lot with us.

In short, seeing Fred and Carrie in person didn’t do anything to dispel the idea that we know them really well without knowing them at all.

After the show, we met up with some friends before heading home, still giddy about our day in Portland in New York.

Posted in New York City | No Responses »
Tags: As seen on TV, Ethnic eats, Food, Friends, Portlandia, Sentimental reflections, Starstruck

Ringing in the new year

Written by Chaz on 23 March 2012

After Christmas in New Mexico, I winged over to Washington for New Years with my friends Joanna, Seth, George and Ben. The visit had two culinary highlights, an authentic Szechuan feast and a great brunch, but one of our first activities was a chilly picnic at Gravelly Point Park right next to National Airport.

Our Szechuan feast was at Sichuan Pavilion in Rockville, Md., though it has apparently since changed its name to Sichuan Jin River. It was unsurprisingly a recommendation from the ever-reliable Tyler Cowen, who started it all. It was my first Szechuan food since our Szechuan meal in Hong Kong, and I was curious to see how the two compared, as our Hong Kong meal was unlike anything I’ve had or seen in the United States. It was much, much spicier and generally more willing to experiment with very strong flavors.

We began the meal with four terrific appetizers: dan dan noodles, which were extremely spicy in an unusual and different way; jelly noodles, also very spicy and of a texture I have never before encountered; dumplings; and Chinese pizza, which was actually delicious even if the scallion pancakes were the most vanilla thing on the table. The two noodle dishes were really the highlight of the visit, though. Both were recommendations from Tyler and he did not mislead us.

Our entrees were equally impressive. We had a ginger pork with crispy rice cakes that was phenomenal both in its flavor and its textures, a chicken dish that was thankfully not as spicy as the dish it most closely resembled in Hong Kong, an eggplant dish that Emmy would have loved, and and a duck dish that came with these Michelin-man-like puffy buns.

The food was really fantastic, and I say that as someone who is very disillusioned with eating Chinese food in the U.S. It had distinct flavors, textures and combinations that I’ve never had before at a mainstream Chinese restaurant. This was the real deal, and it was great.

Our brunch was at Kramerbooks, the Dupont Circle institution known for its hybrid excellent bookstore and excellent restaurant. Between us, we had a crab quesadilla (great and surprisingly large), eggs Benedict, a lox and egg scramble, and oatmeal.

Though not nearly as exciting and adventurous as our trip to Rockville, it was still a great brunch. And, of course, it was great to welcome the new year with my friends in D.C.!

Posted in Washington, D.C. | No Responses »
Tags: Arrivals, Ethnic eats, Friends

Happy 2012 from the other end of the globe

Written by Emmy on 21 March 2012

We fled the big city on the morning of New Year’s Eve in an attempt to escape the urban heat and anticipated insanity. We started toward the coast and toward the famous Chilean city of Valparaiso, or “Valpo” as the locals call it.

Valpo is one of the most lauded Pacific coast beach cities, but it is also the major shipping port of the region, adding to our collection of epic container ship sightings.

The hillside beach town is renowned for its elevators, bringing you from street level up to the top of the mountains. The elevators are a bit rickety and don’t look like they’ve been updated since they were built in the early 1900s.

We took a jaunt up the hill for the cost of mere pennies in order to check out the scenery. The streets were oddly quiet — everyone was inside resting for the New Year’s celebrations of the evening ahead — and so we walked the quiet, empty streets and observed all the graffiti.

The weather was cold and dreary, and the hills were all fogged over. The mist in the air was throwing a chill into our summer day. We were all starting to get hungry, and what better item to cure the foggy blues than a grilled cheese with tomato. We ordered five of them.

We took the elevators up and down in a few other spots along the cliffs, but the crowds were getting pretty heavy. Valpo is renowned for its New Year’s fireworks and people begin lining the hills with beach chairs and coolers hours before the fireworks are set to begin in order to claim good viewing spots. Said coolers and lawn chairs all come in the elevators, holding up the line to get to the top.

We forewent the elevators because the wait was too long, plus we had left the rented SUV in a situation that seemed less than guaranteed. So we picked up the car and started up one of the big hills. Though the hill roads are all marked as being two-way streets, that’s more funny than true. So as we started up a narrow, narrow hill, another car — directly facing us — was starting down. Uh oh.

My father masterfully guided the car down backward. I hopped out to help — and to document — but we also had another guide on hand. The looks of fear on all passengers’ faces really speak to the terrifying nature of the straight backward drop.

We made it off the hill and back onto the main road, thankfully in one piece. We continued onward along the coast. Though Valpo is THE New Year’s destination, we were looking for something a bit less scene-y. So we continued driving along on a road that looked not too dissimilar from the Pacific coast many hundreds of miles north.

The drive was shorter and a little less harrowing than the version Chaz and I undertook on the northern Pacific. The Liss family arrived in the charming town of Zapallar, a far cry from the developed and bustling Valpo. We arrived just before dinnertime and so dropped our stuff quickly in order to make a quick trip down to the waterfront.

The coastline was raggedy and the path curved up and down the hill, snaking past some of the more spectacular houses I have ever seen.

We came back to our hotel and sat down for the New Year’s Eve banquet dinner, which began with pisco sours. Pisco is the national liquor of Chile and we had yet to sample it. I can’t say it was my favorite drink I’ve ever had, but how can you not entertain local customs?

Our fancy New Year’s dinner gave us a chance to get out of our beach hiking outfits and into the one fancy dress each of us brought on the trip.

Dinner had a seafood focus, appropriately. We began with a platter of various customary appetizers, including shrimp on toast, bruschetta, spherical crab cakes and another form of shrimp.

The first course was a choice of two items: salmon with avocado or a seafood and potato cake. We ordered some of each in order to get the full sampling.

After appetizers it became far too dark to take photos — perils of outdoor eating by candlelight. I had a lobster tail, served in its natural form straight from the ocean, more or less.

After we finished dinner, we headed down to the beach along with every other dinner guest and neighborhood resident. The town of Zapellar was said to put on an epic fireworks show, and that they did. The fireworks were alarmingly close to the shore where we were standing, making for both a beautiful show and a mildly terrifying one at that. It was quite the way to ring in 2012.

The next morning, we headed back down to the beach where an aggressive clean-up effort was already underway. We took a long and rambling walk around the shore, winding back up through the “town.” The only open establishments were a handful of small grocery stores. All the activity was down on the beach itself.

No food is allowed on the public beaches in Zapellar, a clear drive toward the one or two restaurants lining the beach. We paid a visit to the one busting with people (which also happened to be the one closest to us). We enjoyed another round of crab “cake” with a side of fresh avocado and tomatoes. Sitting beachside, feet in the sand, with our fresh crab soufflé was quite a way to begin the new year.

Full from lunch, we piled back into the SUV to head to the Santiago airport. We had more than enough time to get there; in fact, we were poised to get back there much, much earlier than necessary. But the seemingly simple drive became a bit more complicated than initially assumed as the highways started to change names and then failed to mark the turn-off for the airport. We pulled off the highway a few times to ask directions, pulled back on, and repeated.

Finally, we got ourselves on the path to the airport and had only one stop left: filling the car with gas before returning it. We pulled into a gas station and the attendant filled the car. Once the SUV was again raring to go, we handed over a credit card to pay. It was rejected. We tried another. Rejected. Clearly the issue was with the machine, given that at least some of these cards had been used earlier that day. Also an issue: we were down to about 20 Chilean pesos. We offered dollars, but that was not kosher. (Mind you, this whole debate was taking place in Spanish.) Finally, we settled on a solution: she would follow me to an ATM across the street, I would extract the cash and then we would move on about our day. By the end of the debacle, we’d become close friends and avoided what could have been a disaster of sorts.

And so with one more cultural transgression under our belts, we boarded the plane and returned to New York, another successful foreign adventure well-spent.

Posted in Chile | No Responses »
Tags: Beaches, Celebrations, Family, Food, Lost in translation, Transportation

Southwestern charm and cuisine

Written by Chaz on 18 March 2012

After Christmas, my aunt, uncles, grandmother and I went exploring in both of New Mexico’s most well-known cities. First, we drove into Albuquerque and split along gender lines — my uncles and I drove just west of downtown to Petroglyph National Monument, where we took a short hike through ancient rock drawings that also afforded us a great view of the city.

Albuquerque is well-known for its annual balloon fiesta, and while I have never made it for the festival itself, we got a glimpse of what I’ve missed as we were driving away from the monument.

We drove into Albuquerque’s historic center, the Old Town. The business hub of the city moved east many years ago with the arrival of the railroad, but the square is still fun to see for the old San Felipe de Neri church. We stopped in at a nearby restaurant, the Church Street Cafe, for some chips and margaritas, which were fine but not as great as we were hoping.

My uncle was very amused by a dog on the roof of a shop, spotted as we walked back to the car. Dogs were always on roofs when I spent four weeks in a small Mexican town several years ago, but my uncle still loved it.

The next morning, my uncle whipped up some delicious huevos rancheros, a common breakfast dish, to fortify us for the day’s travels.

We drove into Santa Fe, beginning our visit at the city’s central square, which probably looks nicer in summer.

We headed over to the Georgia O’Keeffe museum, which was very cool but not that big. O’Keeffe spent much of her life in New Mexico and drew inspiration from its landscapes. We then walked over to the Loretto Chapel, famous for its miraculous spiral staircase. The church had originally been told it was not architecturally possible to build a staircase to its choir loft, until a mysterious carpenter came into town, built it, and left before he was paid. That’s a very nice story, but the staircase is nothing special, I thought. It has no visible support structure, which people think is miraculous in and of itself, but obviously staircases can be built this way or this one would fall down.

We couldn’t get into the best Mexican place in town for lunch, so we headed to a little place off the square for tortilla soup and enchiladas.

On the way back to my uncle’s house, we stopped in Madrid, N.M., for a drink at the Mine Shaft Tavern. Madrid, pop. 149, has become something of an artists’ colony, with galleries lining the small highway. The bar was actually pretty hopping.

I had to work the next day, but my grandmother and cousin spent some of the afternoon make pizzelle, which we all enjoyed.

My uncle grilled mahi mahi for tacos for our final dinner in New Mexico, with some shrimp to go with it. We had all the fixings, and I made margaritas to accompany them.

The resulting tacos were light but full of flavor. Fish tacos are one of the best things about the success of my seafood odyssey.

The next day, my uncle drove my grandmother, my other uncle and me to the airport for our flight out of town. We got one last photo together in the airport lobby to commemorate a wonderful and very memorable holiday together.

Posted in New Mexico | 2 Responses »
Tags: Ethnic eats, Family, Food, Holidays, Nature, Sightseeing

A truly South American city

Written by Emmy on 29 February 2012

After our time in the countryside, we flew north to the bustling capital metropolis of Santiago.

First order of business was — not shockingly — lunchtime. As previously mentioned, sandwiches are like a religious item in Chile. And so we headed to one of their sanctuaries, Ciudad Vieja, a tiny sidewalk cafe in the artsy part of the city well-renowned for what its able to put between two pieces of bread. The menu was widely varied and we took advantage of its many options.

Chilean Spanish has many vocabulary differences from the Spanish I know, and a large number of those differences can be found on menus. So I ordered a sandwich whose ingredients I could not quite identify, other than chicken and bread. What I got was a spicy Chilean rendition on a chicken salad sandwich filled with onions, peppers, avocado and several other veggies. It tasted a lot better than the pictures would lead one to believe.

The dishes ordered around the table incorporated a bevy of different tastes. Alix had the carnitas, seasoned beef served with corn and guacamole, and my mom had a quinoa burger. Quinoa may be the trendy food du jour in fancy New York restaurants now, but its place of origin is more or less exactly where we were sitting.

The sandwich portions, like every other dish experienced thus far in Chile, were positively enormous.

We spent the rest of our first day exploring the city and getting our bearings. Santiago is not really a museum city and is one better explored by walking. The balmy summer weather didn’t hurt the efforts.

We were staying slightly up the hills in one of the artsier neighborhoods and so we trekked down toward the more thumping city center. The neighborhoods are divided by a flowing river, which looked to contain more mud than water…

Downtown Santiago was filled with an entrancing mix of old colonial buildings, new construction and artistic rebellion. I’ve been to Buenos Aires before and was shocked by how European it felt. I’d conjured up an image of South America but felt like I was in France or Italy. Santiago, on the other hand, matched that once-conjured image. It’s quirky and artsy, with pockets of high-rise development and neighborhoods that look like they haven’t changed in centuries.

We spent the whole afternoon exploring the city’s sights and walking to rebuild an appetite. We had planned to investigate another Chilean epicurean standard for dinnertime: seafood. But what’s somewhat odd about seafood in Chile is that it breaks a cardinal rule I’ve always been taught to observe: seafood and cheese do not go together. But in Chile, it appears they do.

We tried two noted specialties at dinner: clams baked with parmesan cheese (manchas a la parmesana) and a crab cake (pastel de jeriba). Now, a crab cake is a known entity to me. And that’s what the Spanish on the menu directly translated to. But this was not a baked cake; this was a cheesy, gooey casserole — closer to the crab dip that aunt makes in the Chesapeake than to crab cakes in the way we think about them normally. Mmmmm delicious.

The next morning we went on one of my most favorite kinds of adventures: a trip to the local market. This particular one — la Vega Central — is home to all the fruit in the city and there is just so much of it. Avocados and cherries are two of my favorite things, but in the winter are so expensive. The reason why? They’re imported from Chile — where they are literally sold by the wheelbarrow (and for mere pennies).

Not too far from the fragrant fruit, it starts to smell like ocean. Not because you’re near the sea per se, but because the fish market is mere blocks away and is heaping with squirmy little guys.

We also visited a flower market, but flowers are far less intriguing than a pile of octopi.

We left the markets and headed to one of the less central neighborhoods of the city. A 15-minute cab ride made a world of difference in our surroundings. Bustling graffiti-filled streets gave way to wide avenues, fancy cars and extensive greenery.

Though Santiago is not, as-previously mentioned, a museum city, one of the newer and more noteworthy landmarks is the Museo de la Moda. At first, we were all sort of suspect of a museum dedicated to fashion. But it turned out to be far more interesting than that.

Chile does not exactly have the most sunny history. It was as recent as 30 years ago that the country lived under tight political control with few personal liberties afforded to the general population. When Pinochet was overthrown in the 1980s, the entire country changed — just as the music, fashion and culture of the world was changing.

The museum was fun and lively — when’s the last time you listened to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” while browsing an historical exhibit? The exhibits gave us a real sense of the oppression of the 1970s and the youthful liberation that followed in the 1980s. There was far more to it than a place called “Museum of Fashion” would have led you to believe.

Later that day we sat down to some more Chilean cuisine. The predominant items in all restaurants we visited were fish and wine. And so we continued to partake. We visited a restaurant called Como Agua Para Chocolate, like the book and movie (which I was exposed to in high school Spanish class).

We sampled a few different fish items (plus one meat one). My seared tuna (bottom right) was served alongside a corn-basil gratin, which was unbelievable.

Part of what was so nice about our trip to Chile — in addition to all of the delicious food – was how much time I got to spend with my family.

The next morning — our last day in Santiago — we decided to explore some of the city’s higher points. The city is dotted with hills, the highest of which are best reached by funiculars. The Chilean funicular is a little more open air than others I’ve ridden before, making both the ride and the destination filled with a beautiful view.

We walked around the Santa Lucia hilltop before seeking shade below. Coming from mid-winter New York weather, it was still hard to adjust to the balmy 90-degree days in Santiago.

Before long, it was lunchtime. We decided to take a break from our sandwiches and go for another set of traditional Chilean dishes. And in line with all the prior lunches we’d had, there was definitely a go-big-or-go-home mentality to the dishes being served.

We sampled a few lunchtime stews traditional to the region. My stew (on the left) contained chickpeas, cinnamon, onion, tomato, coriander and turkey. It was amazing and flavorful. The other stew sampled at the table contained chickpeas, white beans, corn and a series of other spices. The two dishes were incredibly different, despite their similar appearances and ingredients. Both were delicious and extremely filling, but felt a bit more healthy than the colossal sandwiches of the days prior.

The city of Santiago is unbelievably colorful, painted from top to bottom with graffiti. Some of the graffiti is overtly political in nature; others are more benign. One street has houses painted entirely in solid bright colors, each a different shade than the next. We walked the streets and played in the colorful playgrounds.

After carousing around the city for the afternoon and basking in the summer sunlight — we enjoyed a bit of pool time each afternoon — we took an evening stroll on our way to dinner. Two parallel streets near our hotel seemed to be lined each night with table after table of people out drinking. What was amusing was that the first street was filled entirely with underage drinkers out with their friends, while the second was packed with adults out with friends. It seemed that the locals just graduate from one street to the next.

We chose a dinner spot on the adult street. We started with shrimp empanadas (again, breaking the seafood-cheese “rule”).

The house special of the restaurant we chose was fish “a la lata” — fish grilled under a brick with tomato, onions and zucchini. I had pictured almost a sauce made of the vegetables (sauces are very big in Chile), but instead it was fish grilled with the actual vegetables themselves.

Our three days in Santiago were delicious, colorful and cultural. A visit well spent.

Posted in Chile | No Responses »
Tags: Family, Food, Markets, Politics, Sightseeing, Views

Christmas with the family

Written by Chaz on 6 February 2012

Though the real world usually makes it harder to spend time traveling, sometimes it makes it easier. I’ve spent much of the last couple months in Texas for work, and since I was going to be so close, I decided to spend the Christmas holiday at my uncle Eric’s house just east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. My grandmother was also coming down from Fargo, North Dakota, where my dad grew up, and my other uncle was coming with her from Minneapolis. So I was very happy to have the opportunity to join all of them.

I arrived a few days before Christmas, and had to do some work the day after I arrived, which was still a normal working day. Luckily, my uncle, who is an avid and proud hunter, provided his home office, which was more than adequate.

We had a ton of snow in New Mexico the day after I arrived, and our trip into Albuquerque to pick my grandmother and uncle Joel up at the airport was a bit dicey. They had even closed the interstate. But we made it there and back safely, and set to work immediately taking full advantage of the snow with my uncle’s ATV, some rope and a couple sleds.

Though probably not the safest activity I’ve ever engaged in (“Try not to fall off into a cactus,” my uncle said), it was really fun.

The culinary portion of my time in New Mexico began on Christmas eve, when my cousin helped my grandmother make some holiday cookies before my grandmother turned her attention to our family’s Christmas eve tradition: oyster stew.

Oyster stew, it turns out, is very simple. You just cook the oysters until the edges curl and combine with butter and cream, then serve. It only took a few minutes before we were ready to sit down at the table.

My seafood odyssey has come a long way, but oysters are still a little much for me. I didn’t object to the stew, though. What’s not to like about butter and cream? And I guess this is why they call them oyster crackers.

We woke up the next morning to a pile of presents from Santa Claus and a delicious egg bake prepared by my uncle Eric.

After presents and breakfast, my uncles, my cousin and I tied the sleds back onto the ATV and headed out for some more sledding (if you can call it that).

Ever the outdoorsman, my uncle couldn’t conceal his glee when we found some bloody snow that had been the site of someone’s dinner.

We headed home to make the Christmas turkey, and my uncle and grandmother worked together for a while in the kitchen on getting things ready. My uncle had found his mother’s old kitchen apron under the Christmas tree, apparently salvaged from his childhood home, and was seen sporting it in the kitchen for much of the rest of the week. I love the traditional turkey meal (it’s a big part of why I love Thanksgiving), and it turned out wonderfully. Of course, there was a little familial strife in the kitchen along the way, but what can you do.

We suited up the next morning to head out to Sandia Peak for some skiing. It was my first time skiing outside of the beautiful state of Pennsylvania, and the conditions were way better, just as everyone says. We were very fortunate to have gotten as much snow as we did. I read in the newspaper that New Mexico had the best skiing in the country that week.

My trip was off to a great start!

Posted in New Mexico | 1 Response »
Tags: Chilling with the locals, Cooking, Family, Food, Skiing, Snow

Chilean summer in December

Written by Emmy on 2 February 2012

Never ones to sit still for too long, the Liss family took off for another adventure in late December. With everyone miraculously off from school and work for the week, we set our eyes south — way south. Very late on Christmas Eve, an evening when JFK is particularly concentrated with traveling Jews, we boarded a flight bound for Santiago.

On our whirlwind tour of Chile, we planned to cover a lot of ground. We landed in Santiago early in the morning with plans to connect to a flight headed south. First we had to claim our bags, go through customs and re-check them. Simple, right? Well, as documented on many checkpoint adventures, a picnic basket for the plane is crucial. And the Liss family is always prepared. However, the Chilean border control was not so thrilled by our picnic basket of clementines. Our lengthy layover suddenly became a lot shorter once my father was finished with his official interrogation.

Finally we arrived in Puerto Varas in the southern lakes district, surrounded by mountains, volcanoes, lakes and national parks. We claimed our Chilean SUV and piled in, headed further south. Because Chile is so narrow, we passed as many signs for Argentina as we did for domestic cities (prompting my father to continuously sign the central refrain from Evita’s “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”).

We arrived in the picturesque town of Villarica in time for a very late lunch by the lake. Following our long day of travels, we all took a rest by the waterfront under the delightful summer sun.

The town sits under the shadow of the volcano by the same name, which is still very active. Even from a distance, once the light was quite right, we could see little sulfur clouds puffing up from the snow-topped peak. Our hotel was situated just between the village of Villarica and the slightly larger town of Pucón just a few kilometers away. We explored Pucón later that day, taking in some light fare at the adorably named Mamas & Tapas and contemplating our adventuring options for the coming days.

Despite its regular activity, Villarica is a very user-friendly volcano. During the winter it serves as a ski slope and during the summer as a place for climbers, though it always maintains a thin layer of snow and ice. Climbing the whole things is an ordeal largely because of the snow. You need to start very early in the morning in order to finish before the daily melt, which can be incredibly dangerous. Most people sled down after reaching the summit.

We opted to climb from the base just up to where the first snow could be spotted, walking next to the chairlift operational the other half of the year. One of my sisters likened the experience to walking up a ski slope (which we were, in fact, doing) because of how steep the brief climb was. The view of the Andes from the (semi-)top was incredible.

We took a quick lunch break before heading out into some more nature. The region is filled with national parks and having explored the volcanos, it was time for the lakes.

Chaz and I noted while out west that America’s national parks had the bare minimum in signage; just enough to make it clear where you’re going, but not so much that it’s overbearing. Chilean national parks take a much more relaxed approach, by which I mean: there are no signs. No signs in English, no signs in Spanish, and only sheep to seek directions from.

After several wrong turns, we found what sort of looked like a hiking trail. Once on it, the signage was still pretty unclear. We knew we were walking to a lake, but we had no idea how far it would be nor did we have any confirmation that we were actually going in the right direction. We hiked for a few hours, and it’s not clear that we found our intended destination, but the scenery along the way was still pretty breathtaking.

After making our way back to the car — using not quite exactly the same route we had taken to get there — we returned to the village of Pucón for dinner. Chileans are big on grilling; most restaurants have a large sign outside advertising the parilla. We chose one such place and ordered fresh fish and steaks. I was served the largest, most aggressive piece of salmon I have ever seen. It could have easily served three people. My father took his extra steak back to the hotel to make it into a sandwich for the car the next day. We also had grilled tomatoes with parmesan cheese, which were excellent.

The next morning we set off in our vehicle for points further south. During the early part of the 1900s, for economic and political reasons, Chile experienced a mass migration from Germany, Austria and surrounding nations. As a result, some of Chile’s little villages look more like they belong in the Alps than the Andes. Cafes offer German coffees and cakes served alongside little wooden bridges and lakeside cottages. We stopped in a few villages for sightseeing and refreshment.

Our drive wound through the various lakes and volcanoes of the area and as the fog lifted, we could see Vulcan Osorno rising in the distance. Osorno is one of Chile’s largest, though it has not had an active eruption in a few decades.

During the early part of our drive Osorno had been shrouded in clouds and so when it finally emerged, we were quite pleased and turned a little bit paparazzi.

We kept driving until we hit Puerto Varas, one of the larger lakefront towns in the region and where we would be staying that evening. We planned to keep driving a bit further to one of the more famous of the region’s lakes, but decided to pause for lunch while in town.

Chileans love empanadas, which I had assumed, given that this is their place of origin. So we had a few of those and they were pretty delicious.

But what I was intrigued to learn upon our arrival down south is that Chileans love sandwiches. Sandwiches here are big and delicious and filled with things I love. Avocados are sold by the barrel down here (literally) and cost absolutely nothing compared to the going rate in the U.S. Chileans also seem to be pretty religious about their bread making. Pan casera, which translates to “homemade bread,” is found in warm, delightful abundance. Small rolls graced every table we sat down to and the larger versions were stuffed with sandwich ingredients, like my chicken, avocado, tomato delight from Dane’s in Puerto Varas.

Like most food items we had in Chile, we discovered after ordering that we could have easily ordered half as many entrees and been, collectively, just as satisfied. There is definitely a go-big-or-go-home mentality to Chilean eating.

Fighting off our sandwich-induced food coma, we piled back into the car and headed to Lago Todos Los Santos, one of the largest of Chile’s lakes and a featured item in the New York Times’ must-see in 2011 list. (We squeezed it in just under the wire.)

We arrived at the lake, which is inside another large national park, and encountered the same scarcity of information that we had dealt with the day before. The welcome station was closed (despite signs indicating that it should be open), there were no brochures available and the one posted map had been all but destroyed. We found the park’s emergency medical clinic and I tried to extract some logistical information from the chief medic. Meanwhile, my father located the boat launching station and by waving a few bills and his key Spanish vocabulary words, secured passage for the five of us.

The lake is large and beautiful, surrounded by the nearby volcanos and mountains. The lake is also quite long and if you sail its full length, will eventually find yourself in Bariloche, Argentina. However, that would have taken quite a few hours in our little motorboat and so we just puttered around a portion of it.

Had we continued further south from Todos Los Santos, we would have come to the national park found on the island at Chiloe — the furthest point north where penguins can be found. I have wanted to see penguins in their natural habitat ever since “March of the Penguins” (and also “Happy Feet”), but Chiloe was several hours away. We decided to save the waddles for another visit.

We headed back to the town of Puerto Varas for dinner. The majority of restaurants open for dinnertime bore close resemblance to the little cafe where we had eaten our colossal lunchtime sandwiches. We found a nice Mediterranean restaurant among the casual cafes and three-fifths of us ordered a stewed chicken with vegetables and a pea puree, served with the same familiar basketful of warm local rolls.

We retired to bed and early the next morning hopped back in our SUV, ending our brief, adventurous jaunt through the southern Chilean wilderness.

Posted in Chile | No Responses »
Tags: Chilling with the locals, Destinations, Exercise, Family, Food, One with nature, Views

The reunion before the reunion

Written by Chaz on 29 January 2012

After Thanksgiving in Washington, I headed back home to Philadelphia for my fifth high school reunion, which was a bit unreal. It wasn’t a real reunion — just basically an informal get-together at a bar in Center City — but it was supposed to be my class’ first time gathered together since graduation, and of course that’s bound to be an interesting experience.

At the end of my senior year of high school, I went out to dinner every Monday night with a few friends, including Gabi, who is no stranger to the checkpoint, and my friend Julia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we obnoxiously called ourselves Monday Night Club. So before our class reunion, it seemed only fitting to have a reunion of our own. We chose Lolita, a Mexican restaurant on 13th Street.

Lolita is known for their BYOB margaritas: You bring the tequila and they do the rest. This results in every table having a bottle of tequila on it.

We started with a blood orange margarita with wild mint and moved onto a pineapple margarita. I’m not the biggest margarita fan, but they were definitely state of the art.

Dining with Monday Night Club was great from the blogging perspective, as our rules were always the same as the checkpoint’s: everything is shared and nobody can get the same thing as anyone else. We began our meal with a few appetizers: guacamole with chipotle and mango, served with different chips, including some plantain chips; a salad of beet, mango, arugula, sweet plantains and goat cheese; and fundido con queso y chorizo, essentially melted Mexican cheese with sausage and homemade corn tortillas.

Of those, only the fundido was particularly outstanding. The sausage was spicy and delicious, and even the cheese was something more unusual than your usual Mexican cheese blend. We moved on to our entrees: orange-ginger pork carnitas, served with pico de gallo, guacamole, and homemade corn tortillas; hazelnut-crusted duck breast with jicama-orange slaw; and my personal favorite, grilled mahi mahi with more chorizo sausage and a shaved apple salad.

Though I’m not usually the biggest fan of red meat, something about the combination of fish and sausage was really doing it for me. I continue to grow and learn to love seafood, and I think mahi mahi is among my favorite fish. The others were big fans of the duck, which was also very good.

Fortified by both the food and the margaritas, we headed over to the Black Sheep Pub for our class reunion, which was a very good time. It was strange to see high school friends in an adult setting, and hear about what everyone’s up to. But it was great to see people I hadn’t seen in forever.

Posted in Philadelphia | No Responses »
Tags: Ethnic eats, Food, Friends, Reunions

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