Author: zora

Anthony Bourdain Takes My Travel Advice

Last line:

Of course I love this guy! Pyramids–go if you care about your life list. Otherwise, I can tell you they look just like in the postcards, but bigger. Unfortunately I can’t state it quite so plainly when I write a guidebook.

If I could write a guidebook purely to my specs, it would mention major landmarks only if they happened to be in an interesting part of the city and had a good place to eat nearby. The Pyramids in Giza are interesting from a sociological perspective–the town around the Pyramids has basically subsisted on tourism for millennia, but is now in constant battle with the government over how to earn a living without driving tourists insane. But the best place to eat out there is maybe the Pizza Hut. So I think Tony chose wisely.

The Sangria of Queens; or, How to Use Fresca as a Mixer

On our Spain hiking trip, Peter and I swilled tinto de verano at every opportunity. It is the perfect wine-y refresher when it’s hot. (Beverly and I drank a lot of it on our earlier trip too, even though it wasn’t quite verano in April.)

For years, I thought tinto de verano was just red wine and lemon soda. Turns out there are subtleties–such as a splash of sweet vermouth, or of sweet sherry. And if you walk into a bar in Abrucena, Almeria, the woman proprietor offers to add a few drops of lemon essential oil to the top of it, for a beautiful perfume.

An excellent guy we met, who’d worked in the French wine industry for a decade, and clearly had a palate, explained the logic of the drink to us. “The base is all about dry–dry red wine, plus the driest soda you can find. In fact, they often use diet soda, because it’s not so sweet.”

Diet soda? We hate diet soda. Except, apparently, for when it’s mixed with red wine and vermouth. And at home, we certainly like Fresca.

Pues, here we are, in the heat of summer in New York City. And we are cheerfully drinking the official summer drink of Winslow Place: the Winslow Red, aka Tinto de Winslow, aka the Sangria of Queens.

I highly recommend: equal parts cheap-ass red wine (we buy $7 liter bottles of Greek red, to make it more authentically local) and Fresca, with a slosh of sweet vermouth on top. Pour over ice and garnish with lemon and orange slices. Makes an excellent pitcher drink.

Confessions of an Introverted Traveler (Me Too!)

I don’t read World Hum quite enough–there’s always some good take on travel there.

The most recent good thing is this essay by Sophia Dembling, Confessions of an Introverted Traveler.

So true, sister! I struggle with the extroversion/introversion thing all the time. I love the idea of throwing parties (and getting all ready for them), but in practice I really prefer to stay home at least five nights out of seven.

When I travel, I do get a little more lively, but not much. Flipping through guidebooks, I get excited at the sight of various bars and clubs and events, but what it all boils down to, usually, is sitting in a cafe and watching the world go by.

The only real problem with being a relatively introverted traveler, I’ve found, is that it puts you on the defensive, rather than the offensive. Because I’m not busy chatting up the most interesting-looking person in a bar, I’m a sitting duck for anyone who decides I look intriguing. I have met some great people this way, but it often leaves me smiling gamely at someone for a long stretch (I am terrible at extricating myself), and then dashing off to my hotel for a much-needed rest.

And, alas, I’ve just never been one of those people who has fabulous international romances. It sounds like such a great idea, and surely would help my foreign-language skills, but I just can’t do it. The one time I did try it (he made the first move, of course), it did not pan out well at all. No, reader, I did not kill him, as he chattered on in the passenger seat.

So you might wonder how I handle being a guidebook author? It involves traveling alone, for the most part, and getting information from people. I admit, my books are not packed with the collected wisdom of everyone I met in the hostel that night. But the very fact of having the job does make me a little more outgoing–I’m on a mission. I remember talking about this with another Lonely Planet writer at an author workshop years ago. “I’m not normally nosy,” she said. “At home, I’d never walk up to a crowd of people on the street and ask them what they’re all looking at, or standing in line for, or whatever. But when I’m on the road, it’s like I’m a different person. It’s my job to go up and find out what’s so interesting.”

I can’t say I feel quite so transformed on the road, but sheer boredom on trips can drive me to chat with people I wouldn’t ordinarily, and that often gives me some great information I wouldn’t have found any other way. And it reminds me that I don’t actually dislike talking to strangers–I just don’t want to do it more than maybe an hour a day.

Anyway, thanks for writing this, Sophia.

Oh, and for sharing this wisdom in the comments:

To digress, one of the first rules my father taught me about flea marketing was, “Never buy anything from anyone wearing a funny hat.” He believed that if they need that much attention, their prices would be inflated.

Oh, and the recommendation of the book Introvert Power. I feel better already, just having put the title on my request list at the library. (Bookstore: too much of a social space.)

Queens Walkabout: Tortilleria Nixtamal, Timmy O’s, Pollo Campero

On Sunday, Peter and I took a long walk in Queens. It happened to be our anniversary (cue: awwww!); otherwise, we would’ve just lounged around the house like slugs, as usual.

Ordinarily, we would’ve ridden our bikes, but since our Spain trip, walking seems more enjoyable. (And deep down, I know biking is the lazy option–I like it because it’s one of the few sports where you can sit on your ass.) Walking also makes it seem more like traveling. I may ride a bike at home, but hoofing it is standard whenever I go to another country.

Our destination, loosely, was Tortilleria Nixtamal (104-05 47th Ave.), in Corona. Peter happened to buzz by there a couple of weeks ago on his bike, saw the tortilla press in the window and remembered my chronic lament: Corn tortillas in this city suck. The only kind you can get are the ones made with preservatives. My dad still gets the pure corn, lime and water ones in Santa Cruz; Peter picked up the simple goods in Chicago a few weeks back; but New York, where Mexican culture is still relatively new, is a tortilla wasteland.

And ThingsSo, we set off a-walkin’. A little dull at first, since it’s just our same ol’ neighborhood. But we noticed that the Thai restaurant on 30th Ave. near Steinway (south side) has all-new miniature Thai food-stall dioramas in its window. Adorable–and for sale! And we noticed the newish Bistro Les Minots, where genuine French was being spoken, on the other side of Steinway. And we saw that a deli was having a special on “things.”

Spirograph String ArtWe trekked through Jackson Heights, where I happened to see a woman wearing a gauzy outfit in the exact same colors I just painted the dining room, so I felt like my Bollywood vision was based on something real. And we saw more odd art for sale–just $30 for the small ones! And that’s real black velvet as the background.

Jackson 123On 82nd Street, we got a shaved ice flavored with something mysterious and orange and creamy. We passed a movie theater I didn’t know existed, where all the Hollywood hits are subtitled in Spanish, and all shows before 5pm are $5. Maybe I’ll go next week, to practice up before my Mexico trip.

We were momentarily lost, as the street numbers suddenly skewed all wrong–and then we hit Broadway in Elmhurst, and walked past the Taiwanese place we like, with the duck tongues. Tempting–but we had a different goal.

The beauty of wandering aimlessly in Queens is that, except for a few awkward spots where the grid gets bent, you basically know where you are at all times, thanks to the genius numbering scheme known (among urban engineering cognoscenti, anyway) as “the Philadelphia system.” That’s the system that makes most non-Queens-residents have nervous breakdowns when they’re looking for an address like 30-30 30th Avenue. Duh–we know that’s 30th Avenue between 30th and 31st Streets. So, since we were going to 104-05 47th Avenue, we knew we had to go south-ish to 47th Ave, and east-ish as far as 104th Street, and it didn’t matter much how we got there.

Timmy O's Frozen CustardDue to our wandering approach, we wound up having dessert first. We first strolled past Timmy O’s (49-07 104th Street) without batting an eye, but the phrase “frozen custard” lodged in my brain. Half a block later, I said, “That might be good! Frozen custard is rare here.” Peter said, “And any place that sells just one thing is usually pretty good at that one thing.” I’d even seen the word “concrete” on the menu inside, indicating St. Louis-style thick shakes.

U-turn. Back to Timmy O’s, and whoa, we are glad we did! They’ve been open about a year, making just vanilla and chocolate fresh every day, plus an additional one or two special flavors. When we visited, they also had cannoli cream (with the wee chocolate chips) and really good strawberry. All rich and eggy, and served just a little soft, so you can really taste the flavors. Timmy even studied in St. Louis, and told us about an ice-cream-hut crawl he did with his class. He thinks the winner there is Fritz’s, not Ted Drewe’s. (I didn’t say it! He did! But now I’m curious…)

So when we got to Tortilleria Nixtamal, just a couple of blocks later, we were pretty full. Kids were playing out front, and invited us in, but we said we’d have to walk around the block first, to work up an appetite. We just managed it–passing Leo’s Latticini, one of those Queens food landmarks I’ve always heard about and have not quite been compelled to go to because it doesn’t involve anything really spicy. Fortunately it was closed, or we might’ve ruined our appetites again.

Tortilleria NixtamalSo, back to the tortilleria. They have an honest-to-God tortilla press, visible from the outside, so you could watch it like a Krispy Kreme production line. (Love that it’s made by Manufacturas Lenin!) Inside, the decor consists largely of empty Coca-Cola bottles. Mexican Coke, of course–the good stuff.

Fish Tacos at Tortilleria NixtamalWe got guacamole, and it is probably the finest I have had in a restaurant–it tasted like there were bits of roasted poblano in there, and the fresh-fried chips didn’t hurt either. A rajas tamale was super-tasty, even though the masa was dense. And a round of crispy-fried fish tacos, using the fresh tortillas…perfect. We took two pounds of tortillas to go (the machine runs every day at 11am–a little early for us, but the tortillas stay warm in coolers all day). They may not be as good as you can get in Mexico, but until they install a grandmother, patting each one out by hand and cooking them on a wood fire–well, these will certainly do.

While we were there, we read some of their press coverage on the walls–turns out our random wander actually covered a well-trod chowhound trail before us–Columbus we ain’t.

We were fairly full, but seeing how our route home was headed right past El Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan chicken franchise, we couldn’t not stop. I know it’s fried fast food, but it’s fried fast food in Spanish–right down to the trash bins that say ‘Gracias’ on them. Plus, it was Fourth of July weekend, and it seemed like we should eat fried chicken at some point.

Digging InI get strangely patriotic and a little teary-eyed in places like El Pollo Campero. This is what the future of the US is–having our weird plastic-fast-cheap culture spread out in the world, then brought back to us and made a thousand times better by immigrants. Of course you want a salsa bar in your fast-food joint! And damn, the salsa was good–all smoky-hot with little burnt flecks in it. And the chicken wasn’t bad either–crispy, spicy, and almost certainly involving a dash of MSG, but nothin’ wrong with that.

Corona SkylineAfter our chicken break, it was just a long trek home in the dying light. Peter’s feet began to hurt–the knockoff 99-cent-store “Band-Ages” we’d bought hadn’t really helped. We passed a random street fight, involving the cops and a girl in a pink dress who was stuck holding the family groceries. We survived the long, dreary stretch of car dealerships on Northern Boulevard. We maximized the diagonal of Newtown Avenue, and it was still a good 10 miles all told.

But we felt like we’d been a whole lot further. And this has always been why I’ve lived in Queens in the first place–the travel-without-a-passport effect. In fact, it’s nearly my anniversary with Queens too (11 years–I moved in on the very first date!). Recently, I’ve been having the occasional twinge of longing for Brooklyn food culture and all its chumminess and farm-ness and we’re-making-stuff!-ness. But after the Sunday walkabout…I’m renewing my vows to Queens.

And to Peter too, of course–the only man I know who would enjoy a day like this as much as I did. Happy anniversary, sweets.

(A few other good photos from the walk are at this Flickr set.)

Syrian Fourth of July

I could claim that I read the newspaper on July 4 and saw the heartwarming story about Bashar al-Asad sending Obama a 4th of July telegram inviting him to Syria, but really, I was plotting the Syrian dinner a couple of days earlier.

During my May trip, I loaded up my suitcase with pomegranate molasses and Aleppo red pepper paste. I started to get nervous about the pepper paste when I saw Peter wantonly smearing it on his sandwiches. At this rate, it would never make it to its intended purpose, muhammara. (Muhammara is a pepper-walnut-pomegranate-molasses paste that is insanely rich and delicious.)

And after getting zucchini-stuffing instruction on that May trip, I was also itching to break out my weird zucchini-coring gadget, bought on the street in Aleppo in 2007.

Miracle Corer!

I’ll just cut to the chase: it worked like a charm!

First, you pick your firm, evenly shaped koosa (wee zucchini):
Step 1

Then you set the pointy end in the center:
Step 2

Then you set to coring:
Step 3

Twist and push evenly:
Step 4

Voila!
Step 5

You can fry up with the insides with garlic and olive oil to make another nice mezze:
Byproduct

The end result, stuffed with rice, currants and pine nuts. Yes, meat is more traditional, but we were already having lamb chops marinated in Aleppo pepper. Yeah, they look a little obscene. That makes them taste better.
Stuffed koosa

We had some grilled eggplant, topped with chopped garlic, basil and pomegranate molasses–a trick I learned on my first trip, in 1999, at a Christian social club in Hama. Though now it seems odd to me that basil was involved. Could I be imagining this part? Anyway, I like peeling the eggplant in the Turkish, zebra style:
Tower of power

Dinner got going before I thought to take real pics of anything else. We had beet greens with garlic yogurt, the aforementioned muhammara, the zucch innards and some boiled peanuts. Not Syrian, but I’d seen the fresh peanuts in Chinatown the day before, and hey, why not? I also made some potato salad, following an admittedly Americanized recipe in the Hippocrene book, A Taste of Syria. Ironically, it’s the first time I’ve ever made a boiled mayonnaise dressing. (Allspice is what made it Syrian.) And there was a big bowl of fattoush, the salad with purslane, mint, sumac and pita bits.
Tablescape

And lest anyone think we were unpatriotic: the ‘Merican flag was flying off the front deck, and we ate off my collection of state plates.

Brian Eno in the Kitchen

Thanks to vegetarian duck, I was entranced to read about the application of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies in cooking. I always knew I liked Eno, and I’d heard reference to the Oblique Strategies–a deck of cryptic cards for inspiration–but I didn’t know Eno had also discussed the Zen of cooking. It all makes sense now!

I’m a huge fan of constraint-driven creativity. Georges Perec fascinates, algorithmic psychogeography intrigues, The Five Obstructions delights me like nothing else.

But since I am, alas, not a filmmaker, my obstructions are to be found (or not found) in my fridge, and it’s what’s there (or not) that has made me devise my best dinners.

Or, I should say: not necessarily my best dinners, as in everyone at the table swooned, cheered and carried me around on their shoulders. But my best dinners, as in cooking put me in a relaxed, mindful state and the result was my vision, realized just as I had imagined, and all the choices I made in the process turned out to be the right ones. When I wash up the dishes after a couple hours of cooking and eating like this, I feel like I accomplished a small something.

When I wash up the dishes from a dinner where I followed a few recipes, and they kind of hit the spot, but everyone gushed about how good they were–enh. My head is too cluttered from looking back and forth at the typed-up stuff, and all the second-guessing of the recipe.

Double alas, however, I do not have an iPhone to download the (inevitable) Oblique Strategies iPhone app. So I will have to go analog. In preparation, I’ve just requested Eno’s book, A Year with Swollen Appendices, from the Queens Public Library.

Now how can I get Lars von Trier to come over and whip me into shape?

Bjork Confirms: Syria Is Cool

Per NPR, Bjork is going to collaborate with a Syrian pop star, Omar Suleyman. Fantastic! I am a sucker for Middle Eastern synthesizers, and I trust Bjork implicitly. And if more people hear about cool things happening in Syria because of it, all the better.

I wish I were cool enough to say, “Oh yeah, Omar Suleyman…I’ve got all his bootlegs.” But I am too busy wallowing in old-school nostalgic Arabic music, like fellow Syrian Sabbah Fakri.

But Omar–he’s speaking to the kids today, rockin’ the rural style and gettin’ the ladies to do some serious jiggling.

Spain Hiking Photos

Photos of the grand Spanish hiking excursion are up, all over at Flickr. Lots of pics of us looking winded and sweaty on hillsides, and some beautiful tomatoes and a very silly video of Peter trying out all the public gym equipment they have in the villages.

Also, there’s a separate set from our afternoon of “fonting”–kind of like birding, but looking for obscure fonts. And boy, there are some doozies in Granada. (AV, why did you never mention this? It seems so right up your alley… And the Auto Escuela Dorado right by your apartment!)

The photos contain the juiciest anecdotes, but let me just say, in brief: Peter and I may actually live to hike again. It’s hard to believe, but we enjoyed ourselves. Peter was such a convert, in fact, that he walked home from the East Village the other night. I’m not giving up my bike anytime soon, and I still feel a little embarrassed about being seen in public with a backpack (ooh, a matching backpack with Peter’s, no less! That’s what happens when you emergency shop on the day before your flight). But it was a good trip.

And as a guidebook-updating gig, it was fantastic. I could only travel so fast, and was not expected to travel any faster, which is the exact opposite of any trip involving a car and an impractical number of small towns. But I still didn’t manage to buck the Curse of the Missed Swimming Pool. This occurs whenever I have a night planned in a really nice hotel, and I think, “Ooh, maybe I’ll just be able to check in and chill out by the pool that afternoon!” No. Inevitably, my schedule gets jacked up, and there is no swimming or sunning or anything, after I check in at dinnertime, totally pooped. On this trip, it meant that the night we were scheduled to stay at the really lovely place, we got lost near the end of the day, finally found our way, slogged through the river bottom and clambered up the hill just as the sun set and a cold shadow was cast over the pool. We swam anyway, but it wasn’t what I had envisioned.

Genius New Guidebook

nmeyesI mentioned New Mexico: A Guide for the Eyes a little while back, but I just got my advance copy (connections, baby!), and it’s available for preorder now. Release date is August 1.

If you’re planning a trip to New Mexico, or you just came back from there, or you just like the place, I heartily recommend this book. The concept — a guide to all the visual icons, from architecture to food to landscape — is so brilliant that it could change guidebook-land forever.

Every destination needs one — just think of all the times you’ve been traveling and wondered what a recurring symbol/dish/car was all about. The guide to New Mexico has entries for bolo ties, pawnshops, mesas, hogans and even lowriders. Perfect reading for pre-trip education, or while sitting on the patio back at your hotel at night.