Maybe it was the beautiful breeze from the rainforested Kalihi Valley beyond the open door, or being able to spend time with my cousin whom I rarely see, or the fact that I was in Hawaii, immersed in the environment, experiencing something made local, cherished by locals and with locals. Maybe it was the speech, or the wine, or that it concluded a great meal. Or maybe the coffee really was that good, because in that moment I believed all of Kona peaberry’s accolades.

I know that I like light roast more than dark roast, but that’s about where my coffee knowledge falls off. Months later, I couldn’t tell you if that specific variant of Kona coffee I tried on Oahu was better than this house brew I’m drinking now in San Francisco, and I don’t particularly care. Enjoyment is fickle, contingent on the moment, and perception is everything. Taste is no different.

After the most geographically antsy year of my life, I’ve come to expect that food consumed while travelling just tastes better. If I’m making comparisons to meals back home, the contest is rigged, because even if I discount hunger caused by long days of new experiences, I can’t discredit my hardwired desires. When I destination dine, I want to have something to boast about to my friends back home, I want a reason to justify the costs of travel to myself, and I usually find enough to convince myself of exactly that.

So I can’t tell you if the Loco Moco at Big City Diner was better than that four-dollar Loco Moco combo special I lived off of for months in college. Sure, that Shattuck Blvd discount dinner was saltier than bad crack seed, but the spam haikus on the walls were adorable, and did I mention it was four dollars for rice, mac salad, a meat patty and two sunnyside-up eggs? At that time in my life, there was no tastier meal.

In the end, Big City Diner wins, because even though the meat was overcooked and the gravy underwhelmed, loco is slang for local after all. There I was, in a Kaimuki diner, and that counts for something. The Loco Moco was five dollars more, but it was a million times more satisfying because it had “Aloha”.

I don’t want to suggest that Kona peaberry coffee might not be the best in the world, or that food on Oahu can’t be amazing on its own. I just feel that when travelling, that isn’t the point. One thing I’ve learned in what travelling I’ve done is that the fun part about being in a different place isn’t the museums, the monuments, or even the wacky waxy Lenin corpse. Likewise, the most rewarding meals aren’t found at the most famous restaurants or the tastiest local hotspots, but at some ordinary diner where the food is usually unspecial and rarely story-worthy, because that’s where the line that separates a tourist from a local becomes weakest.

That isn’t to say that mundanity requires blandness. After all, vibrant Hawaiian papaya enhanced with lemon is an unspecial breakfast… to Hawaiians.

On Oahu, there is no diner more ordinary than Zippy’s. It’s the common denominator for Hawaiian-American food, normalized across the islands like Denny’s or Waffle House across the mainland. The food is just as ordinary, but not in a bad way. There is a fine line between comforting familiarity and boring repitition, and Zippy’s tends to stay on the positive side. The same old waitress takes your order and that same old meal tastes just as good as always, whether its dependably standard noodle soup or a perfectly acceptable omelet.

That comfort in familiarity is what drives my Hawaiian-born girlfriend Mele across Mainland towns in search of diners that serve rice with breakfast, like the aforewritten upon Tokyo 7-7 and Benice. It’s also what causes her to order Fish and Eggs over and over during her trips to Hawaii, because it’s just one of those things that is taken for granted as normal on Oahu, but relatively absent in California. Zippy’s fish and eggs in particular strikes a comforting chord with Mele, and it’s for that reason that she prefers Zippy’s over others that might be better. The setting just matters more.

As a tourist, I preferred the setting of Jack’s. A well-known secret in a Hawaii-Kai strip mall, Jack’s is a popular mom-and-pop breakfast joint with an ordinary menu that can get quite special on its own, without serving anything out of the ordinary. All of the food is delicious. The fish and eggs was no exception, and neither was Jack’s (Portuguese sausage) Omelet, but most of all I loved that it was tiny, invisible and run by aging residents who didn’t care who I was or where I am from. I just love diners, no matter what side of the sea they’re on, as long as a blue-collar dedication to efficiency trumps current trends or efforts to put forth something new and different.

When I’m someplace new and different, that’s not what I’m looking for, and when you’re someplace familiar, sometimes familiar is exactly what you want. As Mele took me from diner to diner in Hawaii, I loved all my meals through the lens of adventure and she loved hers through nostalgia, and both of us found the mundane to be rather special.

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When traveling I often find that foods from home don’t properly translate in a foreign country. Withdrawal from what I know and love follows, and any potential substitute leads to disappointment and letdown, simply leaving me craving the things I’ve missed even more. In this day and age I can find almost any product abroad, but there’s always something missing, and it’s not until I return home that I will truly have that Saturday morning experience.

Well, it’s been almost six months since I’ve moved to Bonn, and despite my love for the American breakfast, there hasn’t been a day that I’ve missed it. In fact, I have quite the opposite reaction to homesickness when it comes to breakfast in Germany, because it’s the German breakfast that makes me feel as if I’ve come home. If ever there were a word for the opposite of feeling homesick, my relationship with breaking fast in Germany would embody this sensation. Move over, greasy spoon diner: A new cowboy has come to town.

The essential of German breakfast is of course the bread, which is nothing short of phenomenal. The indispensible foundation to this magnificent tradition can embody many different forms; however, with every foundation there must be quality building blocks, and in this case the building blocks for the German breakfast are a wonderful assortment of cured meats, probably better conceived by the American appetite as cold cuts.

You see, Germany is blessed with an overabundance of fertile land, which led to an excessive amount of livestock, and the only way to enjoy this abundance of nourishment was to find a way to preserve it – enter the German art of smoking, salting, and preserving meats. Just as bakeries are all too common in Bonn, so butcher shops are fairly easy to come by in this town. It’s in these meat sanctuaries that I have found some of the most amazing cured (and fresh) meats known to mankind.

If you find a gem like Haupt in Bonn’s Altstadt (“old town”), home to butchers who make most of their own cured meats, offer a wide selection of sausages and are more than happy to walk you through their many offerings, then you’ll be hard pressed not to have an amazing meal. From garlic salami to wild boar sausage to cured meats with schnapps like Kirschwasser, these homemade cold cuts and sausages are of top quality and offer a wonderful way to enjoy a true German breakfast. Always sliced freshly to order, German butcher meats are richer, fuller, and more natural tasting than what I’ve had at home. Many hundreds of years of curing tradition easily comes across in a piece of fresh cut salami or summer sausage – always moist, tender and full of vibrant flavors.

If you want to opt out of savory, Germany offers plenty of sweet breakfast options, including nutella, jams and marmalades. You might accompany your breads and meats with a soft-boiled egg, along with a delicious cup of coffee. Cheeses are also essential. They come in hard and soft-spread varieties, and are best enjoyed along with meats and perhaps some cucumbers or tomatoes. In typical German fashion you’d start with bread, maybe spread on some butter, layer that with some nice cheese, and top that off with any variety of cold cut. If you’re truly zealous, you could add some veggies on top of that. Start your day with any of these combinations, and you are guaranteed a wonderful day.

When back in the U.S. I’ve tried to recreate German breakfast, but it never seems the same. Maybe it’s the atmosphere of Europe that’s missing. Maybe the quality of the meats and breads simply can’t match that of their German counterparts. Then again, maybe it’s the unnatural feeling of being homesick in my own country – I may be able to cook up some bacon and eggs, but as long as I’m in the States, I’ll never be able to truly recreate that German Saturday morning experience.

Haupt Metzgerei
Adolfstr. 51
53111 Bonn
+49 0228 / 633616

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Big words from a food blogger, I know. Yet, I can’t help but think that as new media expands the range of information available on great tastes and great places, social media seems to pin that information to the ephemera of declaration, chopping stories down to announcements, conversations down to responses and the cohesive experience of a meal down to a vivisection of moments that just might be better enjoyed in silence than immediately projected to anyone who’ll click “like.” While I love reading people’s thoughts about food, I wish we could all slow down just a bit to let things simmer before we turn every meal into a venue of conspicuous consumption.

At least, that’s how I feel when I’ve finished a meal on 138th St. and Alexander Ave. in the Bronx neighborhood of Mott Haven. Here, ensconced amidst lonely storefronts, public housing projects and the 40th precinct Bronx Police station, one of the best tamales I’ve ever eaten has been served on the street, morning after morning, for almost a decade.

I found myself on 138th at the encouragement of a friend, one whose eyes light up when he declares: “Tamales… the perfect food.” When he sat me down in his office to discuss the finer points of masa and pass on the name of his favorite tamal dealer, he momentarily revived the experience of the personal tip, a hushed form of sharing and guidance whose intimacy and grounding in actual face-to-face interactions allegedly errs on the side of misanthropes and cynics.

My first visit involved a late arrival, fifteen minutes of circling the wrong blocks and a desperate breakfast break at Golden Pizza before a phone call from my source set me straight.

“He’s not on the corner. Go halfway down the block on 138th. On the north side, across the street from the project parking lot. There are two ladies with an orange cooler at the stand nearby. They sell hot chocolate – it’s really sweet.”

The near-invisible table set up to dispense these wonders apparently operates under the name of Ebenezer. Unaware of this at the time, I ambled down 138th, told to look for a stout Mexican named after a character from The Matrix. As promised, just a few steps over from the hot chocolate vendors stood a well-rounded man in tinted glasses and a tan sweatshirt.

“You have tamales?” Yes. “Is your name Neo?”

He was indeed the one. An introduction and a handshake later, I was sitting on the stoop of a nearby apartment building, scooping masa and pork out of a corn husk with a plastic spoon.

Neo’s tamales Ebenezer, by any name imaginable, come pretty damn close to being the perfect food. Particularly eye-opening are the tamales oaxaqeuños, burrito-sized servings of lard-empowered corn meal and assorted fillings, steamed for hours in banana leaves. These tamales – whether they’re eaten fresh or frozen and re-steamed at home – easily overtake anything you can find at Trader Joe’s, the farmer’s market, a sit-down Mexican restaurant or even my super’s wife’s kitchen.

The masa beneath the banana leaf resembles a thick, semisolid porridge more than any kind of greasy and crumbly cornbread. Like any truly addictive foodstuff, it manages to unite starkly contrasting sensations – rich and fluffy, creamy and grainy, firm and delicate – under a banner of a mild, nutty flavor that demands your undivided attention. The filling within is moist to the point of leaking all the way to the tamal’s surface, always apportioned in absurdly generous amounts and endowed with unrepentant flavor.

At $2 a piece, these are the tamales that justify morning trips to the Bronx – Neo, who hits the street by 7:00 a.m. and makes deliveries to workers early on, tends to sell out of these prized bundles by 9:00 a.m on weekdays.

Neo’s tamal rojo, stuffed with dark meat chicken stewed in a rich red mole, offers the deep, roasted flavors of ancho without too much of the accompanying heat – the result is a hearty classic that pretty much anyone could get behind.

His true star, the tamal verde, is not for the faint of heart. Filled with glorious heaps of shredded pork that swim in a classically trained chile verde, these tamales hit with an intensely bright tomatillo flavor and equally powerful chile-fueled heat that combine for one unapologetically tasty kick.

Neo’s corn husk tamales, $1.25 each, are delicious but not nearly as exciting. Noticeably drier and less beautifully proportioned than their Oaxacan-style cousins, they’re only an option when the good stuff has run dry for the day.

A naturally bred businessman, Neo doesn’t need to recognize anyone as mayor to take care of his customers. I’ve received a taste of something different on the house every time I’ve stopped by, each sample an friendly reminder to try something new on my next visit. This particular treat, a tamal sandwich that one of his regulars decided not to buy, is an act of boldness that would collapse beneath the weight of a less qualified tamal. Although it’s not as good as the product undressed, the moistness of the masa and the substantial spread of chile verde makes this gift a nice hand-held alternative to what would otherwise by a very messy meal.

Neo’s tamales freeze extremely well; steaming them right out of the freezer and adding vegetables and a fried egg yields a great, home-cooked meal in minutes. Still, I prefer to eat mine on the spot. I’ve taken to walking across the street, where the project parking lot is bordered by a nicely curved lip of concrete, and sitting down to peel away the brown bag, paper napkin, aluminum foil and banana leaves, each layer hotter and hotter to the touch.

As steam rises from the mass of masa inside, I unfold a copy of the Times I’ve just picked up from the newsstand down the street and begin reading. Stragglers to the morning rush stroll by every few minutes, some of them stopping by Neo’s table to pick up a sack lunch. The sun is out. The sense of urban calm is serene. For 20 minutes, the world outside Mott Haven doesn’t exist, save how much of it I discern through the day’s news.

When I get to work, I email thanks for the tip and let my friend know that I’ll be posting my story about Neo’s tamales on Tuesday. His response:

As it turns out, as I roll my eyes at FourSquare updates, a more worthy man cringes at the thought of spilling the frijoles on one of his most treasured rites. Our shared desire to combat the dilution of life ends up on different notches of the same sliding scale, and I can only hope I’ve done justice to the trust invested in a personal tip.

What matters most is that the start – and hopefully the end – of any chain of Tweets and reTweets is a real discovery, a real conversation… and in my case a real meal outside the realm of new media business. Neo’s tamales certainly don’t deserve to be hidden from the masses, but they do deserve to be sought out and consumed with all senses attuned to the experience at hand. To the extent that I can make this happen, I’ll be passing two bucks from the Bronx to anyone who’ll make the early morning trek with plenty of gratitude.

After all, no one can be mayor of a banana leaf.

Tamales Ebenezer
353 E 138th St
Between Alexander Ave. and Willis Ave.
Bronx, NY 10454

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When Vicky wrote in from Taipei about the staples of Taiwanese breakfast, I was struck with curiosity. Every other account I stumbled upon stoked that curiosity into veritable starvation until I finally made it up to Flushing to experience the fried dough feasts of Taiwanese cuisine for myself.

This mission couldn’t be easier for hungry New Yorkers to accomplish: Prince Street, a stretch of road curving just behind the Main St. Subway stop in downtown Flushing, harbors two excellent destinations for that morning meal, and both establishments offer said meal in the Taiwanese fashion well into the afternoon.

Nan Xiang Xiaolongbao, a restaurant that serves a mix of Taiwanese and Shanghainese fare, has received praise for serving what some consider to be New York’s best xiaolongbao (Shanghai-style soup dumplings). While xiaolongbao have precious little to do with Taiwanese breakfast, I rarely meet a soup dumpling I don’t like and never refuse a steamer of these gems when they’re on the menu. While the massive dumplings here are more thick-skinned than I’d like, they’re built to hold back a generous bounty of flavorful soup, setting the flaw of proportion just one ponderous, gushing, vinegar-blessed bite from forgiveness.

It’s also tough to cut straight to Taiwanese food when shengjianbao (Shanghai-style fried pork buns) are on offer. Nan Xiang’s shengjianbao suffer from greater flaws – lack of soup, overly thick and doughy bun – than its xialongbao, but a beautifully browned and crunchy bottom make these buns just as much fun to eat, despite their lower ranking on the flavor scale. Nan Xiang’s turnip puffs – each one a golden-brown sample of flaky pastry, toasted sesame and mild, shredded vegetable filling – ultimately trump the clunky buns when it comes to must-order items.

Giving the xiaolongbao a true run for their money, however, is fan tuan. Vicky’s loving ode to these fistfuls of joy is fully realized at Nan Xiang: The sticky rice isn’t packed so tightly that you can’t enjoy the texture of every grain, pork sung is included in just enough volume to get the juices flowing, and the fried cruller at the center – which, apparently, is typically a stale, twice-cooked leftover – retains enough chewiness to add an extra crisp to each springy bite. Add some chili oil and vinegar, and savory fan tuan quickly becomes the best hand-held meal outside of a taqueria.

Nan Xiang’s pancakes, which seem to fuse the composition of a flaky, chewy, slightly greasy Shanghainese cong you bing (green onion pancake) with the form of a Taiwanese sou bing (fried sesame flatbread), are also a highlight – stuffed with sliced beef and scallions, they’re essential to any order here. Fried bun with chives and egg are a bolder choice, composed of an even thinner, flakier crust and overflowing with punchy chives and the smallest bit of scrambled egg to prevent flavor overload.

The pancake marathon continues just down Prince St. at Nan Bei He, a popular destination for Taiwanese food that has actually moved inside its sister restaurant, King 5 Noodle House – you won’t see the words “Nan Bei He” in English on the storefront, but the characters are written in vertical red on the noodle house’s front door.

Nan Bei He’s dan bing (pancake with egg), which costs $2.15, murders the Egg McMuffin and every other starch+egg combination to make a fast food chain’s value menu. Fried to flaky but not too greasy, the rice flour pancake is embedded with scallions and judiciously folded with a thin layer of fluffy egg in a subtle showcase of balance.

Less impressive is Nan Bei Hei’s fan tuan: Its sticky rice is hardened into an overly dense layer, and the fried cruller inside really does feel like it was left out overnight and fried again the next morning. Radish sou bing, taking the form of stuffed buns, are tasty, but they’re unnecessary when regular sou bing and cong you bing are on the table.

Fortunately, the very same fried dough that falls short inside Nan Bei He’s fan tuan shines when given its own spotlight. An order of you tiao (translation: “oil stick”) revels in its crisp, airy, multi-layered, carb-and-fat-flushed stance, especially when it’s requested alongside sou bing for carb-on-carb action. I’ve done a horrible job of making my own you tiao sandwich, but if you make it to Nan Bei He, just keep your eyes open for the real deal – some nearby Taiwanese father is sure to open up the sou bing, split and fold his cruller to fit it perfectly inside the rectangular flat bread, and smash the crusts together with his palms for a perfect fried dough double decker.

You tiao is rarely taken alone. Sweet, hot soy milk is a delicious complement (just dip, eat, then spoon up the leftovers), but 70 cents more ($1.95 total) procures a mighty bowl of Taiwanese xian dou jiang (salty soy milk). Rather than adding sugar, cooks introduce vinegar to the equation, causing soy milk to curdle into pillowy clouds of tofu soup. Chopped you tiao and a pinch of pork sung is thrown in, then the bowl is topped off with scallions and tiny dried shrimp.

While I rarely consider dried shrimp an improvement to anything, the rest of these ingredients merge to create the perfect partner for a sou bing you tiao sandwich. Fluffy, half-curdled soy milk is thin enough to be soaked up with fried dough but hearty enough to be gulped straight from the soup spoon, with a savory, slightly sour flavor that stays well within the boundaries of comfort food.

After eating my way along Prince St., reminded of how many incredible daily dining options are available to the residents of Queens, I have to kick myself just a little for ultimately deciding to move down to Park Slope. Once I relocate, my trips to Flushing will take almost twice as long, and it might not be morning by the time I make it out for Taiwanese breakfast. Still, if Sunset Park and the rest of South Brooklyn don’t offer a tasty alternative, I’ll happily take that hour-long commute as another chance to catch up on my reading, with a $10 feast of fried dough and soy milk waiting on the other end of the 7 train.

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The day Pies n Thighs returned to Williamsburg – opening its doors one block from my front door and mere hours after the Week of Eating In had ended – was no occasion for pride. It was an occasion for nonstop eating. And pointing. Oohing, aahing, and reveling in the moment I’d been awaiting for over two years. After five visits in as many days, I’m all too happy to tip my revelry cup with the following highlights of one of my favorite places to eat:

The Chicken Biscuit – $5

At first glance Pies n Thighs’ revived chicken biscuit seems an awkward update of the original – the new deal gives us a slightly smaller biscuit, bigger chicken filet, and less-than-crunchy exterior. These differences aside, this is still one of the best deals in town: undeniably moist, brimming with flavor and joyously doused in that loving mix of Louisiana hot sauce and honey butter (honey as an adjective, not an ingredient separate or equal to butter, is key here).

If the fact that you can order this during breakfast hours doesn’t send you running for the train to Williamsburg, remind me to punch you in the back of the neck the next time we meet.

The Chicken Box – $11


Packing an equal amount of bang for buck is Pies n Thighs’ fried chicken, arguably the best choice on the menu and victor over its counterparts all over town on the terms of value alone. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the chicken is a shining example of the fluffy-yet-crunchy style that can make eating atomic payloads of grease and salt feel like munching on flower petals made of sunshine.

Pies n Thighs doesn’t offer the fried chicken box for breakfast, but I’ve eaten it out of the fridge first thing in the morning, and it most definitely works.

The Catfish Box – $10

Catfish was the fried offering I looked forward to most during my week of Pies and Thighs, and it did not disappoint. The attention to detail – in the quality of the fish, the gritty breading of the filets, the dual application of tartar and hot sauce, the two thick slices of pickle on sweet slaw, and the greased-to-a-crisp wedge of cornbread on the side – forms an incredibly top-heavy ratio of love-to-bite, not to mention the favorable balance of flavor to cost.

The Pulled Pork Sandwich – $10

I haven’t gotten a chance to talk to the fine folks at Pies n Thighs about just how they’ve been cooking their barbecue. On my first and second tastes, the pulled pork in this sandwich didn’t seem to have a trace of wood smoke, and the vinegar that had once been applied in liberal punches took more of a backseat, smoothing over the edge that made me love this item so much. Nostalgia for a more brutal form of barbecue aside, the messy meshing of flavors and textures in this sandwich still reigns over most other attempts at pulled pork I’ve tried in New York.

The Doughnut and Coffee – $2.50

While nothing will ever replace the glory of Peter Pan, the appearance of a brilliant and distinct old fashioned doughnut one minute from my apartment will definitely force me to examine my loyalties. Dancing outside the perimeter of cake and sprinkling cinnamon and sugar wherever it goes, this crusty ring of fried dough is just big enough to fill its own dish and just just humble enough to fit into a routine.

The Sides – $4


Not all side dishes here are created equal, but collard greens, baked beans, black eyed peas, cheese grits and slaw are all standouts that I’d recommend. The collards at Pies n Thighs are almost a destination dish in and of themselves: Hearty, smoky, spicy and porky, they make a strong case for the restaurant’s Southern cooking credentials.

The Rest of the Menu
I have yet to complete my homecoming tour of Pies n Thighs’ full menu, and I’m all kinds of excited for their brisket sandwich, their burger (supplied by the Meat Hook), their tar heel pie and their waffle (even if this means I have to put up with the nonsense that is weekend brunch).

The Space

Pies n Thighs was originally located in the back room of the Rock Star Bar. When the joint closed down in 2008, its owners promised “a newer, better hole in the wall,” and they have delivered. The effortlessly vintage expressions of comfort and familiarity that made the original location so inviting are fully intact, with over twice as much space and a lot more natural light to accommodate those warm, fuzzy feelings of deep fried affection.

I intend to reciprocate those feelings in full. At the least, I’ll get very full trying.

Pies n Thighs
166 S. 4th St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
347.529.6090

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This is the babka that officially sank my streak of eating in. Say what you will about my lapse in willpower, but if you utter a lowly syllable about the babka, you are banned from my life.

I spent this morning slushing down Bedford for a medical appointment. While trudging back up from the heart of Hasidic Williamsburg, I wasn’t feeling very hungry, but when you’re in a neighborhood as unique as this, hunger tends to be less powerful than the impulse to pounce while you’re in striking distance of a genuine artifact.

The irresistible temptation to take home an edible piece of whatever neighborhood one happens to occupy at any given moment is a core trait of many a worthy eater. I like to imagine myself as worthy; hence, when my friends knocked on my apartment door to help me shoot today’s video, $20 of Oneg Heimishe Bakery’s richest, densest, crustiest chocolate babka awaited their embrace. I had a maple cheesecake in my freezer and could have whipped up a batch of cookies in twenty minutes, but this wasn’t about sating my sweet tooth – it was about recognizing a beauty beyond my person (mere kismet that this particular loaf of beauty was like a dark, sweet brownie folded and swirled into a luscious, streusel-topped sweet bread).

After indulging in my share of the babka, I introduced my guests to one of my favorite forms of breakfast. Steel cut oats, a heartier form of the rolled oats with processed sweeteners I grew up eating on camping trips and on approximated winter mornings in Orange County, are head and shoulders above their single-serving neighbors in the cereal aisle.

While steel cut oats are not nearly as convenient to cook, technology has granted us a few great compromises in the form of quick-cook steel cut oats. Trader Joe’s, McCann’s and Coach’s Oats all sell 10-minutes-or-less renditions of their more traditional steel cut oat offerings, and they’re all delicious.

I spoke to Erin Zimmer, editor of Serious Eats and New York’s own oatmeal luminary, about the relative quality of the quick-cook oats in my kitchen, and she gave me the thumbs up; the main differences in the quick-cook varieties seem to be a finer cut and a partial cook before packaging, putting consumers one step ahead of the groat game.

So, once you’ve gotten ahold of a can of oats, how exactly do you translate them into satisfaction?
Here’s my answer, in moving pictures:

Thursday’s Meals
-Yogurt with frozen berries and granola
-Quick-cook steel cut oats with ripe banana
-Chocolate babka from Oneg Heimishe’s and Oslo Coffee’s “Thor” through French press
-Quick-cook steel cut oats with a ginger, brown sugar and molasses
-Blood orange
-Leftovers from Day Three
-Raw carrots with homemade hummus

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When people hear the word “whole foods,” I think a cloud of buzzwords typically attached to the phrase makes the concept more obtuse than it needs to be. A whole food is simply a natural food that hasn’t been processed, and thinking about it this way makes it a lot easier to incorporate whole foods into your diet.

The healthy whole foods easiest to throw into your routine are raw fruits and vegetables. Realistically speaking, you won’t always eat what’s local and in season, but by seeking out a variety of fresh produce you’re bound to step up your nutrition and improve your palette. You’ll also stock your kitchen with colorful and flavorful ways to stave off hunger – what’s simpler than washing off a carrot or peeling an orange?

Good grains constitute another diverse whole food group that is easy to incorporate into daily eating. Cathy has gone into the bounty of grains more than once her blog, and I regularly buy two whole grains – brown rice and Russian kasha – that have great nutritional value, distinct textures and good flavor. There’s no big mystery to preparing these foods, either – buying a small rice cooker will make cooking whole grains effortless.

My favorite whole food, though, has to be the egg. I’ve expressed my dissatisfaction with brunch a couple of times on this blog, and one of the causes of my aversion to brunch is that as soon as I learned to make my own eggs, I had no desire to wait for twenty minutes and pay an arm and a leg to have someone else do it for me. I don’t mean to say I’m ready to compete in the short order olympics (O, Lord, why do these not exist yet?). Once I demystified the presentation of eggs, though, I learned to enjoy them and their many subtleties way more than I did when I was at a different brunch place every weekend.

That said, today’s video isn’t about how to make the perfect egg, but about how to just get up and do it for yourself, in two easy ways. I’m a bit worried that a lot of our readers this have no use for the actual information it contains, but I’ve met enough people who are intimidated by the mere thought of flipping their own eggs to keep me motivated.

Tuesday’s Meals
-Yogurt with frozen berries and granola
-Banana
-Fried egg and toast
-Omurice
-Vegetable soup
-Roasted beet, sweet potatoes and green beans
-Sauteed sirloin
-Blood orange

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In a case for rarity, last week’s snowtorious blizzard, which for me capped about a month of intermittent winter illness and an accompanying pileup of accomplishments-to-be on my to-do list, gave me a chance to give my entire life the finger for one glorious day of doing – and eating – the wrong thing.

It began on the eve of the snowstorm, with a Twitter update from Liza announcing that a snowball fight would begin at 7:18 p.m. in McCarren Park. Having already canceled on a Hunan dinner in Flushing due to my sinus infection, I decided that there was no way I would miss a flash snow mob in my own neighborhood on the snowiest winter night of the year. As snowballs soared through a blistering and relentless sky and my face discovered a heretofore unknown compromise between stinging and numb, I thanked the maker for north Brooklyn.

I woke up the next morning sore and sick, but with the sun out and a fresh blanket of snow draped over Williamsburg, I made the natural choice to trudge through an extended length of winter for some truly outstanding doughnuts.

I’ve written about Peter Pan Donuts before, and my appreciation for its mastery of American fried dough has not abated. This particular visit, though, was more notable for the Polish side of Peter Pan’s pastry functions. When Amit, J.J., Lilydog and I came in from the cold, I noticed a platter of Paczki set atop the bakery’s bread box. After ordering my go-to, glazed sour cream and black coffee, I asked for one of each. Not realizing that there were in fact two platters of these Polish doughnuts, I ended up with a box of six.

I learned later on from Blondie that the presence of these jelly-or-cream-filled treats was a part of Paczki Day, a.k.a. Fat Thursday, the final Thursday before the beginning of Lent and a traditional excuse for the Polish pious to engorge themselves on their national doughnut.

The paczek, as Peter Pan’s staff have confirmed, isn’t as simple as a yeast doughnut adjusted to the Polish idiom, but it’s pretty close. Paczek dough is traditionally prepared to be richer than its raised American cousin, typically containing more eggs and sugar and sometimes including alcohol as a means of decreasing the amount of oil absorbed by the pastry as it bathes in hot, bubbling oil.

As I would discover after making the very poor decision to try every single item in the box, the paczek is also a filled pastry. Peter Pan excels at the art of the jelly doughnut, exercising restraint in the size of each piece and the sweetness of its filling. Peter Pan’s paczek shares these virtues: the raspberry jam at the core of three of my paczki day treats was hefty, sweet and tart without being heavy, sickly or sour. More impressive was the prune filling, a traditional choice that was surprisingly mild – as a prune lover, I mistook its smooth, not-too-sweet character for blueberry.

While the chocolate glazed Bavarian cream seemed a particularly clunky step down from the shop’s already perfect white cream raised doughnuts, Peter Pan’s glazed powidl paczek was unanimously declared by our group to be the winner. Just as the bakery’s paczki seemed to straddle a ground between tradition and Americana, this particular bite of happiness blended plum and berry jam into an awfully attractive gelatinous blob.

After making my way through half of the box, I was forced to face the consequences… hours of sugar-shocked fullness as a chaser to epic snowball fights are far from doctor’s orders when you’re recovering from a sinus infection.

Still, an evening of pain is not always enough to induce regret, especially when it closes out a beautiful day of snow-dusted deliciousness. Best of all, though I’ll probably never be able to repeat the experience of this particular Paczki day, I don’t have to wait for next year’s pre-Lent feast to head back for a great jelly doughnut.

Peter Pan only offers Paczki on certain Polish holidays.
Please contact the shop directly to inquire about the next occassion.

Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop
727 Manhattan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718.389.3676

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In Portland, I didn’t see a blue sky at all. Then again, I would have been happy hanging out inside the West Coast’s largest bookstore all day, or exploring the rest of the offbeat city of bridges, rain or not. Truthfully, I didn’t know much about Portland before I got there, but I could have guessed that Mele and I would end up eating donuts in the rain at some point. Before our trip, I guessed two things: that I couldn’t visit Portland without having some Voodoo Dougnuts, and they wouldn’t be worth the hype. Sadly, I was right on both counts.

Street carts and outdoor counters puzzle me in a city with constant precipitation. Voodoo Doughnut was not the only place that encouraged people to wait in the rain, but it did have the longest line. While there is nothing culinarily spectacular about Voodoo, it’s an interesting place with a creative menu, and a fitting tourist spot for the city that inspired The Simpsons. That said, I’m not sure if “the magic was in the hole,” and I really don’t know what that is supposed to mean. There was nothing enlightening in either donut we tried, the “Voodoo” or the “Portland,” and I have no reason to wait in that line again.

Of course, the Pacific Northwest isn’t all liberal white people browsing indepedent bookstores, hanging out in eccentric cafes and eating at unique snack shops or hip international bistros. Seattle and Portland are multicultural cities; likewise, my best meal during our visit to Portland came from the side of Portland where the streetlights are painted imperial red. At Bun Bo Hue Restaurant in heavily Vietnamese Southeast Portland, tradition wins over creative redesign and soup wins over fried dough.

That isn’t to say that Bun Bo Hue Restaurant serves the usual kind of Vietnamese food. The restaurant’s signature dish, Bun Bo Hue, is specifically central Vietnamese fare, originating from the imperial capital. Unlike the North’s famous Pho, which has garnered popularity in America at the speed of sushi, Bun Bo Hue has stayed relatively unsampled by laymen like myself and remains deep in the hearts of Little Saigons everywhere.

The interior, however, looked like every Vietnamese restaurant I’d ever been to. Flat screens aired Vietnamese television, heavily made-up older women waited tables and the cilantro was shaped like snake scales. A Yelp! review described the place as dumpy, but it’d be considered a pretty nice hole-in-the-wall by Southern California’s standards, and the only thing I worried about was whether or not I’d be able to read the menu. Fortunately, I already knew what I wanted, and a little phrase like “pig knuckles and congealed pig blood” wasn’t going to scare me away.

Okay, “pig knuckles and congealed pig blood” did scare me a little, so I didn’t follow suit with everyone else in the room and order the extra meat option. I soon regretted this choice. While the gelatinous blood squares were far from delicious – not bad, but boring, like an over-boiled vegetable – the pig knuckles served as poor man’s oxtail, delicious fall-off-the-cartilage stew morsels that had me fishing through soup broth for more. Also hearty were the noodles, which were more of a comfort vermicelli than the thinner pho variety, and a perfect vessel for a more potent broth.

Based on everything we tried, Bun Bo Hue Restaurant is worthy of recommendation to anyone passing through Southeast Portland. The fried chicken skin, crispy without being tough or crumbly, burst with a spectrum of seasoning. That was the name of the game: The pork dish, aside from the rather forgettable garnish of pork fat shavings, was a welcome bombardment of pepper and other intense but purposeful flavors, and of course, the bún bò hue was a sensual feast of taste profile counter-measures. Aside from sweet onions, Vietnamese cilantro and a side of lime wedges, bun bo hue is a very different soup than pho. In place of sweet, bún bò hue broth is tangy, like lemon grass. Instead of being rich and fatty, bún bò hue broth is peppery and multifaceted. Both soups, however, have the tendency to overpower the senses and leave you sitting up and taking deep breaths, because you can feel the flavors staining the walls of your mouth and esophagus. In a good way.

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As starches are staples, they’re not usually coupled with each other and are usually less intense in flavour – in a word, bland. It was akin to finding some bread on your rice, or mashed potatoes mixed with noodles. Yet one morning, when deciding what to have for breakfast one muggy morning in Taipei, the obvious dawned on me: that this happens all the time, and that in fact, my favourite breakfast item, fan tuan (rice wrapped around a fried dough stick), was also a starch within a starch. What’s more, another breakfast mainstay, shao bing you tiao (a fried dough stick tucked into biscuit-like bread) is even more extreme, placing a fried starch inside another fried starch.

The thing is, neither of these is bland at all. Frying adds a savoury touch to the shao bing you tiao, and you can add soy sauce if you want your daily dose of sodium in one go. Fan tuan comes in both sweet and savoury varieties. The latter are delicious, crumbly dried pork and pickled vegetable making for a dry and portable form of breakfast porridge, but it’s the sweet variety that I like the most. Sweet fan tuan is simpler, with nothing added to the rice and fried dough but sugar. Generous amounts, too. The whole warm mixture, just-starting-to-fall-apart glutinous rice blanketing the crispy dough, is just the thing to go with a bowl of warm soy milk (which is also preferably saturated with sugar).

This particular cafe I ended up at that morning, Yonghe Doujiang Dawang, has an open storefront, and the muggy air coming in from the street is blown back by electric fans. Colour-wise, everything inside is a varying shade of fluorescent-lit white or brown, but for some reason the morning here feels anything but drab. The lady who makes the food bustles out front, a television carrying daily scandal blares in the back, and from the basics comes the best sort of comfort breakfast you can get. Fan tuan is made to order, so the dough remains crunchy and the rice warm and soft. Shao bing you tiao is not assembled until the last minute, so the oil doesn’t settle into a soggy mess. There are several branches of this place throughout Taipei, but the setting here, cosy to the core, gives off no hint of this.

In Beijing, those hankering after fan tuan can find it at Yonghe Dawang, a fast-food chain store not to be confused with the Yonghe in Taipei. The interior is reminiscent of McDonalds, and a realisation that starch-on-starch actually depends a lot on fresh and contrasting textures sets in quickly. There, the rice is stale and the dough chewy. Yonghe Dawang’s worst offence, however, is its stinginess with sugar.

I suppose starch within a starch isn’t really that crazy after all. It’s like having a meat inside another meat, as in bacon-wrapped sausage or turducken. It’s good stuff, and – who knows – maybe the next step will be potato sushi.
I will keep my eyes peeled.

Yonghe Doujiang Dawang
Fuxing South Road, Section 2

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