Pepper Steak and a Letter for Brother on Occasion of His London Study Abroad Send-Off
January 5th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
12:40 a.m. this morning.
It was a great last meal.
Although that’s hardly fair since not only has food in the UK undergone a recent renaissance and shaken its reputation for being, um, terrible, but my brother Kevin who leaves for London today for his first experience in Europe will be able to see and eat, well, all of it.
Best of luck to him on this great adventure, and may he soon forget about last night’s amazing steak au poivre delivery from Michael’s as new profound experiences flood his present to replace it!
Crazy how 10 years ago last month, I had just returned from my fall/winter semester based in Florence, Italy. Unlike me, Kevin will have the modern convenience of smartphone technology at his fingertips. Google maps, Twitter — even blog platforms, should he choose to accept the challenge and delight of keeping a published travelogue… To think that in 2000 we actually used real maps. Train timetables in book form. Now even the Prince of Wales has an official Twitter account for updates on events of interest, like the upcoming Royal nuptials. Certainly this access to both more and more intimate information is a blessing, but I can’t help but mourn the loss of much simpler days when ‘slow travel’ was the going way of the wanderlusting world. There’s nothing quite like allowing yourself to get lost in a new city. It’s getting harder and harder to disconnect and go with the flow these days.
But maybe slow travel, as we too hope for slow food, will prevail. And maybe like me, Kevin will wake up early at least on his first day in London, cell phone safely ensconced in pocket, for a morning run through his neighborhood to get the lay of the land, the feel of the place, as merchants accept their first deliveries and open up shop to greet the new day. The memory of when I did that at the start of my great adventure abroad is a good one.
XO Kev, and Bon Voyage!
P.S. You can follow Kevin on Twitter where he says he’ll offer at least more than infrequent bursts of 140 characters of what we can only hope to be an entertaining mix of American and British English at @k_sayet.
Hard to beat, but study abroad should just about do it.
Snap Crackle Pop, Banh Phong Tom
October 2nd, 2010 § 2 Comments
I waited so long to take my bag of instant prawn crackers – banh phong tom in Vietnamese – for a test drive, a souvenir from my trip to Southeast Asia this summer. It must have been a silly attempt to prevent them from running out! Silly of course, because I hadn’t been able to enjoy them which is, well… the point.
I have always loved noshing on these puffed snacks at Vietnamese and Indonesian restaurants stateside when they have them. They’re nom nom. In Miami, Bali Cafe downtown has a few kinds, even one made in-house! (Ask for kroepoek there.) « Read the rest of this entry »
it’s carb on carb action at Domino’s
May 9th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
You know the saying. Too much of a good thing… Well, that’s the case with new BreadBowl Pasta from Domino’s Pizza.
Disclaimer: I was formerly employed at the Company’s advertising agency, so had heard in advance about what sounded like only Michael Phelp’s nutritionist, after a night of partying with the gold medal inhaler himself, could dream up.
I know, I know. Your gasps at the prospect of such blatant excess are transmitting loud and clear through cyberspace. But to tell you the truth, I was secretly curious to see how these pillowy bundles of depravity would be brought to market. I mean, come on, let’s get real. These folks do pizza, not health food. Give ‘em a break. If you’re gonna go, go big, right?
The recently introduced American Legends pizzas also set expectations pretty high in my book for America’s Pizza Delivery Experts. I am actually a big fan of the thin crust Pacific Veggie pie specifically, with its perfectly proportioned layers of sauce, roasted red peppers, spinach, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and black olives with feta, mozzarella and provolone cheeses, all delicately piled onto a crispy crust.
So Domino’s, I regret to type that your pasta is a big fat disappointment. It’s just that I expected more – rather, I expected better — from you. I ordered up a Pasta Primavera in bread bowl and Italian Sausage Marinara sans bread bowl, to get a sense for two different sauces (the former is made with “creamy Alfredo” and the latter, a zesty red one; there’s also a third less appealing “three cheese” option) and both presentations offered.
Domino’s BreadBowl is basically a medium hand-tossed pizza on steriods: shrunken and swollen. For starters, you really have to like the dough to like the product since the ratio of pasta to bowl leans in favor of the bowl. Way too much bowl, in fact, since the Italian Sausage Marinara I ordered forgot to fasten its seat belt and landed in a bread airbag somewhere on the way over. The base of my BreadBowls were soaked with buttery oil, likely the same stuff that makes Cheesy Bread so tasty, as were the boxes that didn’t have the benefit of a wax paper grease mat. More cheese and toppings were needed to balance the carbo load. Because I’m such a big vegetable freak ever since returning from India, I should mention that if you plan to order online (which you should, since they’re offering a $1 off deal now for the launch), you aren’t permitted to add more than three cheese and/or toppings ”to ensure proper baking.” I’m not buying it.
UFO: Yes, believe your eyes. This unidentified fattening object actually isn't that alien. New Yorkers have been putting pasta on their pizza for years. No wonder they do it better.
The verdict? It’s a good value, a lot of food that will most certainly not leave you hungry. But they’re just too big and too bland. It’s too bad. To be fair, this is not to say any of the other national pizza chains doing pasta - well, I guess that’s just Pizza Hut - are doing it any better. In this war, everyone’s a loser.
Domino’s BreadBowl Pasta
Italian Sausage Marinara, Chicken Alfredo, Chicken Carbonara, Three Cheese Mac-N-Cheese, Pasta Primavera or Build Your Own available nationwide starting at $5.99 (or without the bowl, if they remember, starting at $4.99.)
