Travel

I was tired of the bland-coffee-plus-lots-of-sweetened-condensed-milk I’d had in Asia so far, so I looked up a more interesting cafe when in Hong Kong. Via a google search to this coffeegeek.com thread, I heard about Rabbithole Coffee & Roasters… and what a successful morning that was. It’s part coffee equipment showroom, part roastery, part place to drink a coffee (with just a few seats along a shared table and a few more on a back patio). ...

A simple and excellent melon popsicle, in Hong Kong:

For a shift of gears, I had an elaborate meal at Waku Ghin -- a 10-course tasting menu heavy on seafood, with local and japanese themes, served at a small bar with just 4 other diners and 2 chefs. The head chef is Tetsuya Wakuda, best known for Tetsuya’s in Sydney, which I ate at years ago and loved. Not that I’m a celebrity chef horse– all that really matters is the food. ...

My favorite chicken rice of four variants tried this trip (this time, with roasted chicken and slices of raw but mild ginger), for a bit over $2 US, back at the Roasted Delights stall in the food court at Bukit Batok Block 109 (which is mainly the food court for the adjacent apartment building):

I had Rojak (lower right) for the first time, as part of a quick lunch: Rojak is Malay for “mixture”, and I hear it varies vendor to vendor, but the one I had was a collection of fried (but still cool and crisp) fruit and crisp watery vegetables (including something that reminded me of jicama), friend dough, and an interesting spicy and sweet sauce that I think was peanuts, shrimp paste, chili, and a little sugar. I liked that it was a bit less in the sweet direction than many sweet and sour sauces. Refreshing, and a good side dish / appetizer. ...

Singapore isn’t a place I get excited about drinking a beer, since it’s mostly mild lagers like Tiger (good with spicy food, but that’s about all I can say for it) and other similar beers. Plus, a single beer can easily cost $10-$15 US. But holing up during a downpour over the weekend, I came across a bar with Little Creatures Pale Ale- excellent. Hops reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest, but leaning towards spruce or balsam instead of pine. My favorite Australian beer and up there in my favorite pale ales overall. ...

Another success: Yong Tau Fu (less than $3, in a food court at the end of a warehouse full of autobody repair shops and industrial supply stores, and in a stall with a ‘B’ health department rating, which some friends claim is the delicious sweet spot between authenticity and pathogen count): You stock a bowl with whatever greens, fish cakes, tofu, or other ingredients you want: Then you hand the bowl to the person behind the counter, tell them if you want soup or noodles, and they finish it for you. The person who recommended this particular stall said it were good because it’s not all pre-cooked ingredients– if you put tofu in your bowl they take it out and deep fry it for you right then, and certain vegetables they’ll also cook very briefly before tossing them in with the noodles/broth. You top it with chili sauce at the table, of course: ...

I just had Laksa for the first time, for breakfast, and I think I’m in love (I do like a savory start to the day). A spicy broth with coconut milk and chili paste, noodles, sliced fish cake, two hard-boiled eggs, fried tofu, shrimp, rice noodles, some other unidentified chewy bits that I think were seafood, and I’m sure other spices or broth ingredients I didn’t recognize:

Delicious “Sri Lankan Black Pepper Crab” from Long Beach Seafood (their signature dish). No single bite was too spicy, but the peppery butter accumulated in a slow burn… I feel only a little guilty for devouring a 2lb crab myself.

(still good the second time)

Gelik Atakoy (near the airport, outside the city, though there are two other locations) was another local recommendation in Istanbul, and was probably my favorite meal of the trip (followed by the informal adana kebab in the Grand Bazaar). To start, a sort of rice pilaf with lots of cracked black pepper (excellent – I don’t know if it was fresher or different black pepper, or if there were other spices as well), a salad, some pulped eggplant (in white), and more adventurously (the brownish-pink lump): çig köfte, a sort of meatball of raw ground beef, bulgur, and red pepper. I liked it quite a bit. [ side note: looking up its name later turned up an NIH paper about the antimicrobial effects of chopped garlic in raw meat ] ...

I suddenly had to go to Istanbul for a few days (long story). So, of course, I have to fit in some eating: People were drinking Turkish tea in small clear glasses with a lump of sugar everywhere I went. In the Grand Bazaar, I’d see delivery people running around with trays of 5 or 6 glasses of it. I finally happened on a tiny tea stand in the market where the runners were picking it up: ...

Once I heard it was anise-based (like Pernod, Pastis, Ouzo, and so on, but unsweetened, unlike Sambuca), I had to try the unofficial national drink of Turkey, Raki. Not bad, though better with food (cooked meat).