the continued travels

After a too-long absence I'm returning to my blog. I realize that, by the blogosphere's standards, my last post was about 2000 years ago; just one of the hazards of using today's technology with an attitude better suited to the last decade.

During a recent weekend trip to London I was steered, by wise friends, to some of the best food I've had during this trip to Europe. The irony of leaving France to find better food in England is amusing but really only part of the story: I was traveling with my vegetarian girlfriend, and it really is much easier for vegetarians to find something good to eat in london than in Paris. The French are stuck in the 70s when it comes to vegetarian food: think pastel-painted, flower-hung rooms, dishes that replace the boring 8 ounces of meat with 8 ounces of soy replacement, and an approach to vegetables that seems based on the principle that they taste better when barely cooked. London, on the other hand, has The Place Below, a vegetarian lunch counter in the Norman crypt below St. Mary-Le-Bow church, which makes amazing soups and delicious baked grain dishes, and whose chefs are confident enough in the potentials of vegetarian food that they don't need to base the entire meal around the "absence of meat." We also at at a terrific south indian veg on Drummond St., a solid meal that was actually eclipsed by the even more terrific Anbala, the best Indian sweets shop I've ever been to... I can't recommend it enough. No visit to London will be complete, from here on out, without a trip there. The gulab jamun blew the lid off of my puny taste puds with its honeyed goodness.

Our big (and expensive) meal of the trip was at Moro, a Spanish restaurant near Islington, Northish within London, a big, friendly and noisy room. The menu is innovative but stays within the basic parameters laid out by Spanish tapas: wines and ports (including a nice manzanilla I found just sweet enough), plates of sliced tuna in olive oil, tender meat dishes. I had a slow cooked pork chop with pieces of bacon garnishing it, sides of cooked turnips with a little fig compote. Dessert was a cheese plate, idizibal and two other cheeses, sheep-based as most Spanish cheeses are. I was completely satisfied, and had that feeling which is pleasant once a month or so, of leaving a restaurant with my ability to walk diminished.

Back in Paris, I've been discovering the Asian restaurants of Rue Tolbiac, in my neighborhood, largely Chinese and Vietnamese. Steamed buns and "nem," which basically means rolls or buns, are a mainstay of the places here, and I really enjoy strolling along, very unfrench, while munching on something.

Must run - work calls - Ben