on the road, day 9: limoges to brest.

It seems that 10 nights in a row of unventilated smoke-filled hotboxes and a diet of 50% cheese is about all my respiratory system could take. I've got enough mucus in my body to start World War III.

Last night's show was just short of disastrous. Our sound man seems like just about the most laid-back guy on earth, but apparently this facade dissolves rapidly if you do something that offends him. For example, if you put a homemade limiter on the mixing desk that turns off the output of the PA if its level reaches 105db. This might manifest itself like this: after the band spends 3 minutes gradually building the intro to a song into something that's about to explode, the singer steps up to the mic to deliver the first line of the song, the band switches gears to take off behind him and.....his microphone shuts off, rather anti-climactically.

After much running around to determine why this might be happening, someone tells our soundman about the limiter and the look on his face made me want to assume a crash landing position. Even worse was when, after they'd apparently sorted it out, it happened again. The last thing I heard was a nice and Scottish "Can one of you fucking people please fucking tell me why the fuck the fucking thing's still on there?" I left the room as it was a bit painful to watch. A few minutes later I asked him if he needed any help and he said "Can you find me a wee bit of dynamite?"

On the upside, there's only one more show left. Brest is/was interesting because it's been the part of the trip we were all dreading: 600km on non-highway roads. We really had no idea how long it would take, but our best guess was 9 hours, which is a long time in the van even under the best conditions.



Turns out it wasn't bad at all, almost 9 hours on the nose. I spent the day trying to decipher my new Michelin guide so that we might avoid any more meals like the one in Bourges. In fact...I could be imagining this, but the Bourges lunch seems to have traumatized us a bit: we had a hard time stopping for breakfast/lunch yesterday because no one wanted to be the person who said "this looks good, let's stop" lest it be another bomb. So an hour after we'd decided we were hungry, we finally stopped at a petrol station, and by this time we were so famished we might've even eaten the Bourges food again. I saw Mr. croque monsieur on the menu and thought I'd put my tooth on him. No picture unfortunately, basically a ham sandwich on white bread with an inexplicable layer of bechamel sauce covered by melted cheese on top. I was so hungry I really don't have any idea if it was good or not. I think it was at least OK.



Later, for pre-dinner we stopped in Lorient, a very odd downtown area which at 4pm featured more open gun /ammo shops than open cafes. After a bit of a walk we found an open cafe in the faux-historic grand cafe style. Lots of older folk out for coffee with their tiny, well-dressed dogs: I saw two separate tables at which the dog was seated across from its owner, tail wagging, eager look on its face, the owner chatting happily to the dog as if this was the most normal lunch date in the world.

At this point in the afternoon the menu was limited to 5 sandwiches and a salad or two. For research symmetry I had the croque madame, which was basically a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread with no inexplicable layer of bechamel sauce but instead a raw egg on top. This was pretty good, easily the best-looking thing at the table. Everybody else's sandwich looked as if the ingredients had simultaneously fallen off of the grocery store shelf, during an earthquake or robot attack perhaps, and had coincidentally landed on top of each other. Good baguettes haphazardly sliced as if in self-defense, filled with the cheapest, most carelessly prepared ingedients. Just thinking about them is depressing.

In fact, today's meals and the evening's dinner would really drive home the fact that it is very very easy to eat badly in France, as we have repeatedly shown. I've done better than most b/c I'm such an embarrassing food geek and my menu selections are the result of my vast alien brain's nearly blinding ability to calculate the potential goodness of each menu option. But for the average shmo....man.

Last night's dinner was the last one that we would place in the hands of someone else. It was in the hotel restaurant (and as such paid for by the venue), which smelled like a Asian market fish stall when we walked in. Now, we are in the harbor, on the water, but this is not a smell that inspires confidence, particularly because there was not an Asian in sight (joke!). We proceeded on to a overly bright dining room (mt, you would've instantly died I think) which featured a "seafood buffet" of boiled shrimp, escargot (seafood?), and assorted fish/shellfish salads. Um, no.

I had the soupe de poissons and the poisson du jour, which turned out to be something called Colin, which is also the name of our soundman, who also ordered Colin, which led to much obvious but nonetheless funny humor. It was all....bleh. Fine, I guess. I can do better. You could do better. And the fries: every single damn fry I've had here is the most greasy, limp thing you've ever seen. Anyway, as Dustin Hoffman would say in his incedibly bad Italian accent during his incredibly bad performance in Perfume, "basta". It was now time to take the reigns of our destiny and pull or yank or whatever you do in that situation.

on the road, day 8: bourges to limoges.

This is a photo of something I would never in a million years do. A bee landed on Terrie's finger while we were having coffee after our quite awful lunch in Bourges. Actually, the bee landed on his arm first and walked its way up to his finger with Terrie coaxing it along. I myself would've been halfway down the street after the bee landed on me...I have a well-documented anti-stinging insect policy.

It turns out that Terrie's bar for insect tolerance was set extremely high during the year he spent driving around Africa in 1995 or so. He and Emma toook a Land Rover to the Sahara and basically drove around for a year, also hitting the Congo, Chad, and plenty of other places where no one does this. Some of the roads they went on hadn't seen a vehicle in 6 years according to locals. I'll get to that in a minute.

But when Colin and I cringed over the fact that Terrie was letting this bee have its way with him, he said: "Bah...when we were in the Sahara, hoor, that was heavy. Some days you really had to run for your life. Because the insects were so thirsty, hoor, if a bee or wasp found out that you had something like a tomato with you or in your car, they would go back and tell all of the other bees or wasps, and in 10 minutes, they would all show up for the tomatoes and start stinging you without being provoked, because they needed the tomatoes. and you just had to run (maniacal laughter)."

"They also had these little bees called sweat bees that wouldn't sting you, but they wanted your sweat. And as soon as they found you, your face would be black with them, crawling up your nose, under your eyelids...you just had to wipe them off like shaving cream, hoor (maniacal laughter). It was crazy! Some days we had to stay in the car all day and only come out after dark because they were so bad."

"But the most aggressive insects were the termites....Emma and I were sleeping on these foam mats and one night we heard this tack tack tack tack tack (mimes large mandibles chomping) and we looked down and they'd eaten half the mattress (maniacal laughter)."

He then went on to talk about how you couldn't leave oranges in your car because the elephants would tear your car apart looking for them....and not to get between a hippopotamus and the water. But anyway that's why Terrie's not bothered by bees.

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Terrie is bothered by undercooked pasta and bland cream sauces, however. As are the rest of us to varying degrees. The most damning piece of evidence with regard to how bad the food was in Bourges is that Kat said it was "smaakloos", tasteless. And as Andy said: "if Kat complains that something is tasteless, then that's really saying something".

It had started promisingly with a good-sounding recommendation from the desk clerk at Kat's hotel, French home cooking with local ingredients. But we couldn't find it. And then someone who shall remain nameless spotted a place that advertised "fresh pasta" and went in. What followed was a splendid illustration of why it's worth spending a little time planning a lunch spot when on tour.

This was just 100% form over content. There were glass jars of artfully arranged dried pasta everywhere, wine bottles galore, Tuscan yellow on the walls and tablecloths, but wow what an absence of love in the food. They first brought out some bruschetta mozzarella that really just screamed Pizza Hut in every way: industrial, mass-produced, probably frozen and reheated. Then the pasta came out, accompanied by Parmesan granules (not grated parmigiano reggiano, but "Parmesan")...and everyone's pasta was uniformly undercooked, dry, and completely, weirdly tasteless. I myself had veal Marsala, which was OK once I salted and peppered it. But in general this was the worst restaurant meal I've had in a long time.

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Then it was off to Limoges. The venue was cute and downright petite, part of the university...it was a 10 year anniversary party, so the atmosphere was festive. More exciting than this was the fact that the opening band sounded like they might not totally suck. Dinner was better than average, brought in by a cook who was very proud of his work: a tomato-less ratatouille, a strongly herbal and spicy couscous, pork in a mustard sauce, and a nice green salad. The gig was fine, the PA was a little small, about the size of my home stereo, so the sound didn't really fill the space so well. Also, this was the smokiest night of the tour, and after this I would finally succumb to lung duress...I've been coughing and sneezing ever since. The opening act was in fact good and they was some nice people too.

on the road, day 7: montpellier to bourges.

So. this might not look like much, but this is the creature that came between me and a promising night of much-needed sleep. It's, against all odds, really...a rooster, just outside my fucking window. Doesn't this seem like a flagrant, obvious conflict, the rooster vs. the sleeping person? And this rooster taught me an important rooster fact that I was unaware of: they do not just do their "cock-a-doodle-do" thing at dawn, although they certainly do it then. No, they pretty much do it all fucking morning, or until somebody climbs out of their hotel window, walks the 20m to where they are crowing, and chokes the life out of them.

Which...I did not do, unfortunately. But the Montpellier Chicken Alarm Clock put a damper on my day. We had a long drive today, so we met at 10:30 and hit the road. I'm having a hard time remembering what I ate on the road this day. This could've been rubbery petrol fish day. I'll finish this post when it comes back to me.














































































Tonight was the only other night on the tour where love was really in the air. After Vanessa took off her dress and threw it on the ground in front of the merch stand, the pheromones must have started some sort of chain reaction in the air...we got out of there just in time.

Our rooms for the night were in a sort of dorm apartment thing...nice beds, but two to a room. I got Andy, who suffered through a night of my sinus breakdown in progress.

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Breakfast looked like this:

on the road, day 6: grenoble to montpellier.

on the road, day 5: genéve to grenoble, france.

Whew. Finally an internet connection AND more than 15 minutes to use it. We are in stunningly beautiful Grenoble at the moment, playing in a rather unbeautiful venue that looks like it should be hosting a high school talent show. Everyone is quite beat up as the result of a very late night in Geneva and so it will be interesting to see how the evening progresses.

We seem to be playing two kinds of places on this tour: the fun shows have been homey squats with very little support personnel, just two to three people working very very hard, also featuring home-cooked meals (fresh-baked brioche this morning!); the less fun shows have been at newish, sterile concrete boxes with more sound, tech, and hospitality people than there are musicians onstage. More on this when I get to post about the first few shows.

Anyway, today, thus far it seems to be the latter. On the positive side: I got to try andouillette today. Um...brace yourself, this is challenging food. In fact, if you're feeling queasy at all, I'd quit reading and come back when you feel stronger.

The thing is, in my initial France research, I'd read one sentence about it and knew that it sounded like something I'd end up eating...but the truth is, I probably should've read a little further. Here's Wikipedia's definition (edited):

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Traditional andouillette is made from the colon and the stomach of pig. In modern times, contents vary and normally contain intestines of pig, cow and/or calf. It is not to be confused with andouille sausage, which is much spicier, but more mild in animal-derived smells.

French andouillette...is an acquired taste and can be an interesting challenge even for adventurous eaters. It is sometimes eaten cold, as in picnic baskets. Served cold and sliced thinly, the smell, taste, and texture may be mistaken for an andouille, but on closer inspection the texture is considerably more rubbery and the meat has a more animal-like flavor.

Many French eateries serve andouillette as a hot dish, and foreigners have been disgusted by the aroma, to the point where they find it inedible (see external links). While some find that hot andouillette smells of feces, food safety requires that all such matter is removed from the meat before cooking. Feces-like aroma can be attributed to the common use of the pig's colon (chitterlings) in this sausage, and stems from the same compounds that give feces some of its odors.

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Here's the best part: I ate it at a gas station...their plat du jour was andouillette au poivre avec ratatouille. Ah, France.
The photo above is not mine, but that's what it looked like: very very coarse-grained sausage, chopped instead of ground. The smell? Not great. When we walked in to the grill area of the restaurant you smelled it immediately...you knew it was an awfully, offally familiar smell. I was hoping that the smell I was smelling was not the eating I was going to be eating for lunch. It was.

And the taste? OK. Edible. I could maybe see ordering another one for comparison's sake, but...let's just say I probably won't be making my own andouillette at home. I'm very glad I tasted it though.

UPDATE: My apologies to everyone at the venue, it was the best show yet: 450 enthusiastic people from from teens to grandmas having a great time (and buying plenty of merch). The crew was really friendly and totally competent, and the band was on fi-yaaaaaaaaaaaa (to be pronounced in David Lee Roth's devil falsetto). A very sweet couple who had been buying CDs on and off throughout the night (and who helped me recover from a drunk person's red-wine spill into one of the CD boxes) approached us after the show and said that they owned an Italian restaurant, and would we like to come for lunch the next day. Yes, we would! Report to follow.

on the road, day 4: genéve, switzerland.

on the road, day 3: bern, switzerland.

on the road, days 1-2: belgian breakdown.

I don't have a lot of time to write at the moment, so i'll instead do that thing where the picture speaks for the thousand words, etc. These first two images really crystallize what the tour has been about so far. First, from Neufchateau, Belgium:

















and, in Nancy, France:

















Yes, that's right, the van died (for good) in Neufchatel. On the upside, being stranded in Neufchatel looks like this:


































That is, until you have to unload your van onto the side of the highway, and then it looks more like this:

















That is, until an amazing rescue team swoops down upon you from three hours away, packs you into their van, and then hurtles back across Luxembourg at death-defying speeds to land you at the gig just before you're supposed to go on. The second picture is from the next morning when the rescue van itself wouldn't start due to a misconnected brand-new battery...

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But everything worked out fine. Except for the yellow van being declared "a catastrophe" by the Belgian Volkswagen mechanic. There will definitely be more detail to come as soon as I have access to an internet connection for more than 30 minutes.

More relevantly for this page, on the eating front: I knew we wouldn't have much time in each city, but there has really been no time to do anything other than drive, break down, call for help, wait, get rescued, drive, load in, do the thing, pack up, find the hotel, find out that there aren't enough beds for all of you, toss coins to see who sleeps together, lose the coin toss, and then fidget until dawn.

What I'm saying is: it's been all petrol stations and backstage food. Add to that the fact we've only been in France for a few daylight hours so far, mostly Belgium and Switzerland.

But France is where the eating highlights of the trip thus far have occurred. It has illustrated that cliche of French cuisine "getting the simple things right": I had the best croissant I've had in a long long time at the hotel in Nancy, lightly toasted and crispy on the outside, chewy, airy, and lightly buttery on the inside. And the eating highlight of my trip so far has been an amazing grilled ham and cheese sandwich at gas station outside Nancy:

















It might not look like much, but what appears to be an innocent ham sandwich is actually a perfectly crispy baguette that's been grilled like a bruschetta, given a good once-over with real butter, and filled with good ham and better Gruyere. It's like a dream version of a ham sandwich. (to give Belgium some props, I had a perfect braadworst in Antwerp the size of my arm, with sauteed bacon and onions, mustard, and ketchup...a manly breakfast indeed).

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Other food notes: Let's see....in Opwijk I think a girl tried to hit on me by giving me a very tasty caramel (nice one) and then sitting on the CDs I was trying to sell (mmm...less good). It was hard to tell exactly what her intentions were because she was, I think, very drunk...after her first two sentences ("Would you like a caramel?" and "Parlez-vous Francais?") she became completely speechless (most probably because I don't parlez-vous Francais). But there is nothing quite like watching someone try to communicate while being doubly incapacitated by alcohol and a language barrier. Worrying and endearing at the same time, she was...I'm pretty sure she eventually found another target for her caramels of desire.

Speaking of incapacitation via language barrier, I will soon find myself in semi-rural France with not much French to work with. More on this in a bit. Til then, here's a picture of the rescue van hurtling through the Swiss Alps.

sidebar: breakfast rooms.

The hotel breakfast room in Europe: if you've never been to Yurp, you don't really know what I'm talking about, although the concept is familiar: your hotel room comes with a "free breakfast". In America, this means you go down to the lobby and have some cereal or toast and shitty coffee while you watch CNN or whatever pap is on the TV down there and simultaneously "read" USA Today. It can be a loud, semi-bustling environment (depending on what time you wake up of course).

In Europe, hotel breakfast rooms are deathly still and quiet, unless there are Americans there complaining about the lack of CNN, USA Today, and toast. Ideally you would never spend any time at all in one of these rooms....you would walk out the door, turn left or right, and within 50 meters you'd find a dreamy patisserie or cafe where you could sit outside with real people and enjoy a sublime croissant or pastry and a double espresso or two.

However, sometimes your hotel is not located in a city center. In fact, sometimes, your hotel is located in a very American-seeming highway offramp kind of situation, and if you're up before anyone else and hungry....the hotel breakfast room is your only option.

















The above picture was taken in the hotel breakfast room in Dendemonde, Belgium. I was up early and hungry, and OK although this time we were actually in a city center, I was interested in what a Belgian hotel breakfast was like, and didn't really feel like facing the outside world yet.

It was...modest but OK. Above you see a ham sandwich with Emmenthaler, oude kaas, and honey; a honingkoek (honey cake); and a couple of speculoos cookies. And a cup of tea. With honey. Lots of bees in Belgium apparently.

fantasyplan.

I have about 20 drafts of posts sitting around, the Blogger equivalent of Post-it Notes, reminding me of things I want to cook. This is a constant process pretty much, thinking of things to cook...which I thought sounded pretty fucked-up for awhile until I realized that for me it's a way of constantly "creating", and it can give you immediate, tangible results whenever you actually make time to stop by the stove and cook any of these brain visions.

The thing with leaving these posts as drafts is....I never look at them after I save them, so it's about as helpful as jotting down something on a Post-it Note and then throwing it out the window.

Which is why VDuck will probably contain more posts like this in the future. The point of this one in particular is to remind me to a) eat at Zinc Bistro the next time I'm in Phoenix (which will hopefully be May/June 2007), and b) steal some recipe and presentation ideas from Matt Carter (there's even a combination of tuna and socca, two of my faves with no (to me) obvious affinity).

Here's the eGullet thread that caught my roving eye.

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Also, I had a perfect no-time-for-prep vegetarian dinner planned for Tuesday, but the venue has been moved. For future reference, it was: Marcella Hazan's Ligurian Vegetable Soup; ricotta-zucchini-spinach raviolis (from Pasta Panini on the Rozengracht) with tomato-butter sauce; stoofperen.

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st. packrat's day.

We've been engaged in an unprecedented undertaking for the past few days: an actual Spring Cleaning. It's so obviously been a critical need for some time now, it seems impossible that we hadn't done it yet.

Maybe it's this: for the last few years springtime has found us either relocating our business across town (boo!) or moving house (yay!), and...while we one way or another got rid of truckloads of stuff each move...our newest living quarters are more modest, maybe even small: one room the size of (to paraphrase Terrill Soules) one room.

Into this one room we have crammed not only the semi-average-sized belongings of two mid-30s packrat nostalgists, but the flotsam and jetsam of our defunkt CD shop (including the entire inventory and fixtures), as well as a currently functioning CD/LP distribution business. And two sweet kitties.

Thus: after a truly impressive effort to get rid of every unnecessary thing in our apartment this week, we decided to commemorate the occasion with an uncharacteristic dinner: some kind o' meaty stew. I've made beef stew about twice in my life, but I've been reading Julia Child's The French Chef Cookbook, and wanting to cook something out of it for a few weeks now. Turns out however that after digging around in there a bit, her stews were just the tiniest bit more fussy than what I had time to cook tonight: and if I'm going to cook out of her book, there's no point in not following the recipes.

So we agreed on some essential components, basically: beef, red wine, thyme, carrots, onions, garlic, and potatoes....stewed. And that's what we had (what follows here is easily one of my worst efforts to date in trying to express a recipe):

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beef stew with bay leaves and thyme.

500 gr riblappen (boneless beef chuck), cut into 2-3 cm cubes
2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 large sweet onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced (you could even double this if you were in the mood)
1 cup red wine (Shiraz, Zinfandel, big wine)
2 tbsp. flour
1 cup chicken or beef stock
2 bay leaves
leaves from 3 sprigs fresh thyme

150-200 gr potatoes, cut into 2 cm cubes
3 medium carrots, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 small leek, sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 tbsp parsley or selderij (celery leaves), minced


Heat large soup kettle/crockpot to high, brown the beef on all sides in the olive oil. Remove and set aside. Add onion to kettle, sauté 3-4 minutes. Add garlic, sauté 30 seconds then add flour. Cook 2 minutes or so until incorporated and browning. Add wine, stirring to incorporate and scraping bottom of kettle to get any crusty bits. Add broth, bay leaves, and thyme, bring to simmer. Add browned meat to kettle. After a simmer, turn heat as low as possible, cover, and simmer for 2 hours or so.

After two hours, add potatoes, carrots, and leek, along with some more wine or broth if things are drying up. After another hour, things should be tasting and looking good. Adjust taste via salt and pepper, add parsley. Let sit for 5 minutes and serve with a salad, fresh baguettes and butter.

Serves 2 proud mooperbirds.

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atlanta: keepin' it sleazy.

Some friends are headed to the ATL for one night only and wanted some entertainment tips. It was tough, due to the diverse, idiosyncratic, budget minded nature of this group of friends, so I just approached it as if it was me stranded on a Monday night in Brookhaven without a car.

Well, as if it were a budget-minded version of me. This is tough, as little gives me more reliably perverse pleasure than spitting on my own budget's grave; my first ATL inclinations would be to go to Sala or Tierra, or somewhere similar where I could seriously deplete my cash/credit reserves while seriously treating my giant hungry tooth to good eats...and then go do some of the other shit listed below.

Travel is another moneysucker: one of many negatives about the urban (and suburban) sprawl of Atlanta is that you must have a car to be truly mobile. Or a lot of money for cab fares: they pile up quick if you're carless and you don't have all night to try and get somewhere useful via MARTA.

For the options outlined below, the most cost-effective way to get to options B and C would probably be to take MARTA from Brookhaven/Oglethorpe Station to either Midtown Station, North Ave. Station, or Five Points Station, then take a bus or cab to any of the destinations below (specifics follow).

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OK, so now...the list. Keep in mind that this is a budget-minded version of me who's apparently trying to re-live his mid-20s.

So. I'd probably do one of these (in ascending order of adventurousness):







OPTION A: CHAMBODIA.

Take a moderately expensive cab (or hopefully hotel courtesy van) to Hae Woon Dae. The point of this option would be to experience a real Chamblee strip mall, an evening of real Korean BBQ, and plenty of real unusual (but pleasantly so) atmosphere, followed by a relatively early bedtime. To dramatically increase the adventurousness of this option, you could visit one of the next-door strip clubs for some concerned frowns, intimidating stares, assuredly ethnic booty, and maybe even some exciting gunplay.

This option has collapsed under the impossibility of its own logistics. There's just no reasonable way to get a larger group of people out there from Brookhaven without a car service, and I'm not sure that's in the budget. My suggestion of cabbing it to Buford Highway was met with tremendous skepticism by locals still living in the ATL.


OPTION B1, VIRGINIA-HIGHLAND

Take MARTA from Brookhaven Station to Midtown Station. Take the #45 bus (Virginia-Highland) and get off at the intersection of Virginia and Highland. Or take a cab from North Ave. Station to the intersection of Virginia and Highland.

Your destination is: my old watering hole in Virginia-Highland, the Highland Tap, for deadly deadly martinis, icy-cold Sierra Nevadas, and a superb burger or steak, possibly followed by either: Taco Mac across the street for their legendary beer selection (and hey Monday is trivia night, giving you the equilibrium-testing challenge of using your brain while simultaneously reducing its usefulness).

Other dining options in the Virginia-Highland area will appear here shortly.

Note: Should you feel invincible-livered, Option B1 puts you in an excellent position to combine Options B and C, but the degree of difficulty is high here. Read on for details.

If you're just looking to extend Option B1, you could enjoy a pleasant 15-minute postprandial stroll south down N. Highland to Option C below. It's a pleasant walk even if you decide to forego Option C but just want some exercise and a nightcap: The Righteous Room is where I'd go, and then call a cab from there.

Or you could take a cab to Heavy Metal Karaoke (with live band!) at 10 High Club (under the Dark Horse Tavern). Mara said it rocked.

Remember MARTA only runs til midnight, so...if things get out of hand, cabbing it back to Brookhaven will probably punch a $30 hole in your wallet.


OPTION B2, LITTLE FIVE POINTS
Take MARTA from Brookhaven Station to Five Points Station, then take the #3 bus (Auburn Ave / MLK Drive) east to Euclid Ave and get off in front of the Variety Playhouse. Or take a cab directly to the Variety Playhouse.

Your destination is: my old watering hole in Little Five Points, the Euclid Avenue Yacht Club, for a pulled BBQ pork sandwich, good beers, and entertaining camaraderie. There's a few more blocks' worth to investigate here, but really...it's hard to consider L5P a nighttime destination in itself these days without a show to go see there. During the day....maybe, for CD/LP shopping, but still...not a terribly rich seam to mine 'less you just wanna drank.

Pictorially, About.com hits some highlights of Little Five with this pictorial, but geez, here are some more nostalgic pictures from pre-digital times, 1998!


OPTION C, URBAN BLOAT
Take MARTA from Brookhaven Station to North Ave Station, then either take the #2 bus (Ponce de Leon) to Highland & Ponce de Leon, or take a cab directly to the Clermont.

Your destination is: the Clermont Lounge. To quote Wikipedia: "The Clermont is perhaps best-known for featuring dancers who do not meet the traditional physical standards for strippers, the most famous of which is Blondie, notable for her ability to completely flatten empty beer cans between her breasts." To say that the Clermont strippers do not meet traditional standards is...accurate. The only downside here is the shitty canned beer selection, but...you're slumming.

The Clermont should be followed or preceded by a greasy pie at Fellini's Pizza, or a decent Cuban sandwich at La Fonda Latina (I wouldn't order anything other than this or the paella here). Don't expect greatness at either of these places, you're there for the patio and because I used to go there. There's also the Majestic, which really only makes sense when taken in tandem with the Clermont or similar debauchery.

Safety Note: you will probably snap this relatively quickly, but just in case: this is not really an area of town to randomly explore on foot unless you're up for "real adventure". Stick to Ponce de Leon Ave, walk tall, and don't talk to anybody on the street unless you're trying to score some drugs. And if you are, don't follow anyone anywhere to get them. Unless you really need them. And then, well...take it sleazy, bro.

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And speaking of scoring...you should also at some point try to score a HOT Krispy Kreme donut if you haven't had one. But don't bother looking for one if you're not prepared to wait for the HOT NOW sign in the window to light up, cos otherwise....it's just a donut.

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tour de france.

Ha. I am suddenly going to France for 11 days. Well, not just France, but frankly, wherever the van takes me. Here's where it will hopefully be taking me:

29-03 Opwijk (BEL)
30-03 Nancy (FRA)
31-03 Bern (SWI)
01-04 Genève (SWI)
02-04 Grenoble (FRA)
03-04 Montpellier (FRA)
04-04 Bourges (FRA)
05-04 Limoges (FRA)
06-04 Brest (FRA)
07-04 St. Malo (FRA)

I desperately need chomping tips for this tour, since: a) it's my first trip to France, period, and b) I don't know anything about anywhere we're going. Our schedule is tight, as in, we won't have much time for getting lost looking for good food, so I need reliable info....any ideas?

For my own reference, some notes:

We start out in Opwijk, which is a tiny Belgian suburb of 12,000 people outside of Bruxelles. I'm not sure what the deal is on this gig, or how late in the day we'll leave to get there.

5 hours away is Nancy (tourist info), in the Lorraine region, the Northeast of France. The more I look at it, the better it looks, it's full of Art Nouveau (L'Ecole de Nancy), which I know nothing about. Described more than once as "the artistic and intellectual heart of modern Lorraine". Plagiarism, or generally accepted fact? Here's the venue.

Then it's 4.5 hours to Bern (tourist info), which Wikipedia describes as "rich of cultural offerings for every taste" (sic). Right. We're playing at the Reithalle, which used to be "the old riding school of Bern, now a meeting place for the alternative scene, with concerts, parties, flea market and much more". Hmm.

Then, yay, a 2 hour drive to Geneva (tourist info). Here is eGullet's Geneva thread, not so helpful at the moment, but maybe it will chug into life soon. Here is where we're headed.

2 hours away, Grenoble (tourist info) is in the Alps, and is not only full of Italians, but is walnut country apparently, so I should try to find some nocino (or vin de noix, walnut liqueur); tourtons, pasta squares stuffed with cheese, spinach or prunes (amongst others) then fried. Restaurant listings here (apparently stolen directly from the Rough Guide).

A nice short (3-hour) drive to Montpellier (tourist info) is next. Montpellier is supposed to be notoriously difficult to eat well in (and drive in). Cellier-Morel (Maison de la Lozere) has received a bunch of recommendations, but it's Michelin level dining. Mosaïque (21 rue Vallat) is supposed to be good and simple.

Then, a 7-hour drive to Bourges (tourist info) in the Loire region. Someone recommended the pâtisserie Aux Trois Flûtes, on the corner of rues Joyeuse and Bourbonnoux; for chocolates and the local sweet speciality of fourrées au praliné, Maison Forestines on place Cujas. In general, fruit and veg are the shit in this region. Another recommendation just popped up for Le Jardin Gourmand. Which looks good, but I seriously doubt we'll have time for it that day.

3 hours to Limoges (tourist info). Limoges is part of Limousin, here are some eating links. Can this be considered prime foie gras country?

Ook. A tough day, 9 hours to Brest. Brest is in Brittany, sounds like it's not much to look at (bombed heavily in WWII). But this is the time to start looking out for crêpes and galettes. And seafood. La Carene is somewhat near the water.

3 hours away, Saint-Malo (tourist info) is in Brittany too, and looks awesome. Too bad the venue isn't closer to the water. Here's an eGullet post on Breton pastries, including Kouign Amann. And someone has said that the Le Petit Moulin du Rouvre restaurant just south of St Malo and west of Mont St. Michel is good eating.

Then.....11 hours back to Amsterdam, hopefully nowhere near as destroyed as the last time I tried this. Actually, maybe I'll hang out in St. Malo for a few days if the weather's nice, then take a train back.

dollyflower.

It feels like we're the last to know about how to make cauliflower taste good. I learned about it this summer from a Jean-Georges Vongerichten recipe, but further research revealed that the topic has been gaining critical mass for some time.

The concept is simple: cut the cauliflower into 1/4-inch slices. This thickness seems to allow the stems to cook at about the same rate as the florets. And then cover the whole mess with the best olive oil you've got. Roast it in the oven for 40 minutes at 200C, keeping an eye on it to make sure that it doesn't overbrown. You could also just turn it over every 10 minutes or so if you don't mind hanging out by the stove.

What you end up with is something that is nutty and sweet that most people would never guess was cauliflower. The extra good news is that the recipe readily accepts elaborations: using butter instead of olive oil; adding cumin or rosemary; pine nuts and capers, etc.

Below is my adaptation of the initial recipe that got me hooked on this preparation method, but it's also great without the caper-raisin sauce.

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roasted cauliflower with capers and raisins.

1/3 cup capers, drained + 1 tbsp of their liquid
1/3 cup raisins, preferably golden
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp. butter
nutmeg for grating
ground black pepper
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

1 head's worth of cauliflower florets, stems cut longways into 1/4-inch slices
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil or walnut oil

Place cauliflower in a roasting pan and coat with olive oil. Place in a 200C oven for 40 minutes, checking every 10 minutes or so to prevent overbrowning. Meanwhile, combine capers, raisins, butter, and water in a small saucepan and simmer for 10 minutes. Let it cool and then zshoom it up in a food processor.

Reheat the sauce, then add the nutmeg, vinegar, pepper and salt if needed. Serve cauliflower with a dollop of the sauce onto 4 plates. Finish with a tiny grating of nutmeg.

UPDATE: Apparently I've incorrectly transcribed one or more improvisatory elements of this recipe...tried it according to this recipe last night and it had lost something. Will try to fix soon.

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