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Friday, January 15, 2010
As we start the new year, I’ve been looking back at 2009. It was a crazy year, one filled with tough challenges, new opportunities, lots of travel, and, of course, many exceptional meals. Which makes it hard to pick my ten favourite dining experiences of the year. Some fabulous meals, I should say, were had at home (yes, my darling wife S is that good a cook) and at the homes of friends. But for this post, I have decided to limit myself to restaurant experiences. So, what makes a great, truly memorable meal? Well, the food, naturally. But as I reflected back over the last 12 months, many of the meals that really stood out were because of the company at the table. Eating with good friends that also love food surely enhances any gustatory experience. Similarly, decor and good design goes a long way to enhancing the dining experience. And lastly, the uniqueness of the meal definitely played a part — some of my best meals of 2009 were great not just because of the food or the friends dining with us or the restaurant’s interiors, but because they were so different or novel or just plain fun. So here are the ten best meals I had in 2009. (Keep reading)        Posted by Chubby Hubby 15 comments 
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Saturday, January 9, 2010
I don’t know about you, but after I come back from a place in which I’ve eaten really well, I’m often still craving the foods from that city or country for the following few weeks (if not longer). It doesn’t matter that I most likely overindulged (and that’s putting it mildly) while travelling. I just want to keep enjoying all the yummy local, seasonal dishes from those great places for as long as I can. I know, on the flipside, some travellers experience food fatigue when overseas for too long. I remember, as a child, being dragged into Chinese restaurants in Europe by my own mother. “Enough!” She’d exclaim after going without Asian flavours for too long. A proper meal, in her mind, meant a meal centered around steamed white rice and a variety of savoury dishes. Cream sauces and big plates of one kind of meat just didn’t make sense to her. My darling wife S and I, however, have the opposite problem. Inevitably, whenever we come back from a trip to Japan, we’ll spend the next 2-3 weeks recreating dishes and flavours, using both ingredients we’ve carted back as well as sourcing stuff locally. Similarly, since coming home from our pre-Christmas trip to Venice, we’ve been dipping into our various regional Italian cookbooks and been whipping up an endless parade of Venetian dishes, for ourselves and for friends. One of the dishes we’ve really been enjoying is a simple risotto made with Treviso radicchio. (Keep reading) Posted by Chubby Hubby 10 comments
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Wednesday, December 30, 2009
1am: Stuck in line. Standing in the Air France customer service queue in Terminal 2F in Charles de Gaulle airport. The line’s not moving at all. Stuck on the runway in Italy for hours trying to get here and now I’m stuck in line. At first, I thought everything was going to be fine. The pilot had originally announced that Air France would try and get all of us onto our connecting flights. But when I asked a steward a little while later if our flight would be held for us, he gave me one of those “you-silly-little-man” looks that the French are so good at and said, “Mais non, you will have to spend the night in Paris.” S and I are with two other friends, B and V, who had also attended the wedding in Venice and whom are also trying to get home. Unlike us, they have to be at work on the following day. Thankfully, we’d closed our office until the new year. 2am: We’re all finally checking into the Ibis hotel at Charles de Gaulle Terminal 3. Took us forever to find the damned place. The Air France customer service guy said it was easy. Just go out the doors and take the CDGVAL, he said. I think he was just trying to get rid of us. Once through the doors, we spend the next twenty-five minutes looking for signs for the damned shuttle. While waiting for it, one of our friends said, “Hey, there’s also a Sheraton and a Hyatt Regency here. Why didn’t they put us up there?” My very tired wife S said it best, “Because the Ibis is cheap.” (Keep reading) Posted by Chubby Hubby 18 comments
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Monday, December 28, 2009
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t care how cliched it may be, or how overrun with tourists it can get, Venice is still (and probably always will be) one of my favourite cities in the world. Maybe it’s the lack of cars, the addictively delicious tramezzini that stare out at you from countless cafe windows, the couples smooching openly everywhere, the stunning Byzantine-influenced buildings and palazzos, the bellinis, or the simple silliness of walking around and getting lost in the city’s labyrinth-like streets… I don’t know. I love being in Venice. Love being there for the craziness of the Biennale, with the hot sun pounding down and the glitterati of the art world fussing over themselves at exhibitions during the day and madcap parties come dark. Love being there at winter when, for once, the locals outnumber the tourists and cold winds batter at you ceaselessly. It’s a city of romance and splendor, and if you look hard enough, gastronomy.
My vicacious wife S and I, and several friends, spent a good part of last week in La Serenissima. We were there to attend the wedding of some very close friends. Of course, I also made sure that we planned a long enough break so that we could visit some of my favourite eating haunts and shops. I had a good reason for this. While I’ve been to Venice probably a half dozen times in the last decade or so, S has only been once, way back in 2000. I had brought her there in December 2000 in order to propose to her. We arrived on 26 December, got engaged just outside of Saint Mark’s Square, and saw in the new year there. But we didn’t eat well. In fact, except for a meal at Harry’s Bar, all of our other meals were less than memorable. Back then, I didn’t know Venice well. And my previous trips to the city were as a backpacker, when eating at good restaurants wasn’t really a priority. Since then, despite my insistence that there is great food to be found in Venice, and my postings on this blog, S has always been a tad skeptical. With this recent trip, I was determined to convince her that Venice has great food. (Keep reading) Posted by Chubby Hubby 10 comments
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Friday, December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas everyone! My tired yet still sexy wife S and I are back from a crazy trip. We went off to Venice for a week, to attend two very close friends’ wedding, as well as to revisit some favourite eating places (plus a few new ones). If you’ve been watching the news the past week, you know that Europe has been experiencing some of the craziest weather in recent history. The day our friends got married, Venice was covered in snow. It was staggeringly beautiful. After which, when we tried to get home, it became staggeringly annoying as our plane from Venice to Paris was stuck on the tarmac for hours as we waited for the runways to be plowed and the plane’s wings to be de-iced. By the time we got to Paris, it was well past midnight and we had missed our connecting flight home and had to spend the next 22 hours in Paris. Of course, we made the most of it and tried like mad to pack in a full French vacation into just one crazy day. We have loads of photos to share, plus some other posts we’ve been working on. I hope to spend a good part of the holidays updating the blog. So stay tuned and happy holidays. Posted by Chubby Hubby 4 comments
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