LONG WAY HOME

Thursday I drove to a shantytown outside Lima and was introduced to the students of a wonderful cooking school for underprivileged kids set at the edge of the sea. More on that soon. That afternoon I walked around faded, regal central Lima and later took the overnight flight to NYC. Arrived Friday AM, repacked my bag, and left again for the weekend rush of the LIRR and the strange culture shock of the Hamptons. Back in the city now, locked inside working, liking the post-downpour breeze. Lima, above, in bits and pieces.

I ATE PERU. THERE IS NOTHING LEFT.

Down in Lima this week working on a fun food story. It's grey and sort of fall-wintry here, which I would have dressed myself for if I was someone who remembered to check the weather before leaving the house (or country). The warmth of my hosts and all the good food they filled me with more than made up for the weather. Can't go into too much detail as I need to save it for the story, but highlights included: the famous anticucho lady and the famous black clam, both seen above. Anticuchos are cow's hearts that are marinated, grilled and served hot on skewers out of little carts like this one that come out at night all over the city. This lady's been in the neighborhood for over thirty years and hers are meant to be some of the best. They were in fact really, really good. Conchas negras are jet-black clams from the north of Peru, used in remarkable looking all-black ceviches or just grilled. Other notable items consumed over the last four days: lungs; stewed tripe; fried blood; chirimpico = a dish of goat's tripe's & goat's blood; kid goat marinated in chicha; devil fish; an interesting sea urchin ceviche; crayfish grilled in a corn husk; guinea pig; fish roe fritter; pork ribs; green Peruvian minestrone; green tamales; pappas rellenas; and on and, I am afraid, on.

WHAT'S LEFT BEHIND

Sunday. On a train to Newark, trying to not miss my flight to LIMA. The last time I was in Peru was a few years ago for a story for Food & Wine. We hiked the Ancascocha trail way up in the Andes. In five days of walking we passed maybe four or five people who lived in the hills (and no other hikers). One of them was a woman who owned some sheep. The chef I was traveling with bought one of the old woman's sheep for our dinner. He and the guides brought the poor thing down from the hill, slit its neck and, working swiftly, pulled the skin off like a sweater. A couple of local kids drained the blood (a vivid quickly coagulating red) into a bucket. We took the meat and left everything else for the locals who had uses for all parts of the animal—the skin for some kind of musical instrument I can't remember the name of.

HALL OF FAME OF PORK (IV)

Those aren't big bats. This isn't a cave. And that's not my own raincoat. It's Spain and those are hundreds, thousands of legs of jamon iberico, the greatest ham in the world. This is where they hang the bellota to age. The disposable coat is for the visitor's protection: at room temperature, the fat drips down like sacred rain. Earlier in the day we'd run around with the very happy pigs, bloated and happy on acorns. Then of course we ate a lot of the stuff and it was of course really good. This is an old picture — wish I was there today but I'm in muggy NYC and who wants to see a picture of that?

SCOTLAND: "GIE HER A HAGGIS!"

Past weekend = a long, boozy one in SCOTLAND. Fly fished, danced in a kilt, drank priceless Scotch, had a look at Loch Ness, hiked a very little and slept less. Flew to Newark—where I spent my layover at a Scottish sounding place called McDonald's—and then on to Florida for my grandmother's 96th (!) birthday. Above: Glenlivet master distiller Jim Cryle tends to a reproduction of the kind of small old stills bootleggers would use to make moonshine whisky in the hills around here a long while ago. The stuff bubbling straight out of the thing was surprisingly mellow and good.

STUCK INSIDE, THINKING OF ELSEWHERE

My particular form of desobeissance is to day dream about recent travels and flip through old pictures while I am supposed to be working. It's a perfectly nice bright New York day outside my office window, but I'd rather be wandering around somewhere. These shots are from a short trip to Paris in March. I could go for a pression of Mützig at the Brasserie d'Ile St. Louis (middle picture above, with the pretzel-lifters) or better yet a Leffe Brun at the perfect horseshoe bar, Petit fer à Cheval on Vieille de Temple. Mostly though I just feel like wandering. OTHER THINGS I AM CURRENTLY OBSESSED WITH: granulated cactus honey powder; cauliflower; Duke Ellington's Money Jungle with Mingus and Max Roach. OK, BACK TO WORK…

WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM?

A couple more pictures from Liverpool, while we're on the subject. Within an hour of arriving, I watched two drunk women beat the shit out of a man in a wheelchair. Also, I find in my travel notes this cryptic statement: "Salad is a flawed concept."

A FOUR OF FISH (HOLD THE FINGER PIE)

Was in LIVERPOOL in February working on a short little thingy for Bon Appetit magazine which is out in this month's issue. For a Beatles fan, there's a funny dream-like feeling about landing at John Lennon International Airport (actual slogan: "Above Us Only Sky" — is that really the message an airport wants to get behind? In case of plane failure, there is no after-life?) and directing the taxi driver to the Hard Days Night Hotel which opened earlier this year and which is right around the corner from what remains of the Cavern Club. The fish & chips are from a restaurant called London Carriage Works. Anyway, the story is HERE

SWAMP CRACK

Alligators, as you probably know, love marshmallows. "Swamp crack" is what Captain Sammy, whose damaged-but-not-quite-gnawed-off hand that is, calls them. Riding around in a fast, loud air-boat looking for gators is good for a hangover—almost as good as a really good hamburger (see below). Later that night we ate fried alligator at Cochon, which we all felt a little guilty about.

A VERY GOOD BURGER

Camellia Grill, New Orleans. Just home after a long weekend down there for my friend Bill's bachelor party. Fun. Painful.

SOMETHING ABOUT BUSSES

I'm stuck on a bus, so: a random bus thought. All over Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, there are these mini-busses called Dolla Dolla (named for their cheapness, I guess). They're everywhere and they all are customized and painted in wild colors and given evocative names like "Super-Man" and "Bridgestone" and "I Love Tokyo." When I was there this summer I saw some with heroic & bad ass names, some just odd. But the one I liked best was called simply "Part of Life." Could there be a more no-bullshit name for a bus? Sardine-can-stuffed Dolla Dollas in dusty Dar or air-conditioned, wi-fi-equipped on leafy Rt 25, that's all a bus ever is to anybody: a part of life.

WAY OUT EAST

Been out on the North Fork of Long Island for the last few days, holed up in a friend's empty house in Orient. In full Reclusive Writer Mode: walking in circles, talking to nobody but myself, skipping rocks on a short pebbly beach, blasting the same Thelonious Monk album (Monk's Dream) over and over, eating my friend's kids' ice cream bars and drinking tumblers of Wild Turkey & Diet Coke (note: I am doing this ironically; don't try this at home). My friend's friend lent me a giant supertanker of an old Mercedes to get me to the market to buy more ice cream bars. It goes zero to 20 in just under a minute & when it's rolling it ain't gonna stop for nothing. It is the best. I love it out here. Wish I was doing this all summer. I have more tennis balls to practice serving and more Herzog-like letters to compose in my brain. Alas I am headed back to the city today. Actually writing this from the bus. A bus w/ wi-fi. Which is all you need to know about this bus.

HOW TO

Tokyu Hands Dept. Store, Shinjuku, Tokyo. (1.1.07)

STILL BRIDGE CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

Happy 125th birthday to the Brooklyn Bridge. Yesterday, to join the birthday celebrations (and because I am fat and cheap) I walked across the bridge. It's still a spectacular thing—up-close and from either approach—but it's impossible to imagine what it must have looked like to those on the ground as it was rising up out of the river to become the highest point in the city skyline other than the needlelike spire of Trinity Church downtown, linking the two cities for the first time. Read David McCullough's biography of the bridge and its builders, The Great Bridge. If a book about a bridge can be moving and thrilling this one is. The Roeblings' stone and steel wonder was opened to the public on May 24 1883 to general citywide joy and pandemonium. Chester A. Arthur and Grover Cleveland were there. Brooklyn's mayor Seth Low proclaimed "Not one shall see it and not feel prouder to be a man." One hundred and fifty thousand people walked across the day it opened; 163,500 a few days later. The Sun quoted a policeman: "It seems to me as if the people have got the bridge craze." One other thing: Everyone who crossed in those first days paid a toll of one penny. I paid nothing. Adjusting for inflation that means I saved one billion dollars.

HALL OF FAME OF PORK (III)

Lecherones, Huarocondo, Peru. This little town is outside Cuzco and is justly famous for its crispy-salty-juicy roast suckling pig. The guy posing next to the pork is Manuel, my excellent guide along the Ancascocha trail that extends from the Pomatales Canyon up into the Huayanay range and intersects the Inca Trail on its way to Machu Picchu. (1.28.05)

THE WEST COAST IS NICE

I'm back in NYC now after the west coast whirlwind. Had lots of fun, saw friends, ate good things. That's COULTON up there in Santa Monica, holding an ice coffee purchased at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf where we saw Al Pacino. I went to Coffee Beans all over town but never saw Pacino again. That's the power of Coulton. Coulton played a great show with Paul & Storm at the House of Blues. Thanks for letting us party like (soft) rock stars in the green room. I am sorry I drank your third-to-last beer. Stein and I played tennis in Griffith Park. The bacon is at the Chateau Marmont and it is peppery and it is good (if maybe not Hall of Fame of Pork good). My old and newlywedded friend Chris Browne lives in LA. That's him with Chaffin and Jeana in the parking lot outside the restaurant where we celebrated the Mrs. Janice Browne's birthday, though she is not visible here. Nobody is really visible come to think of it. The guy with the pizza is my friend Joel Baecker who operates an excellent mobile wood-oven pizza operation up around Petaluma. More on that later but you can check it/him out HERE.

HALL OF FAME OF PORK (II)

Savory smoked-pork strudel. Restaurant Pretzhof. Tulve, Alto Adige, Italy. 2/2/08.

HALL OF FAME OF PORK (I)

My friend Mr. MARTIN wrote a great guest post over at EatingAsia about the babi guling from Ibu Oka in Ubud, Bali. I truly have no idea what any of those words mean and it is possible he just made them up. But it all looks and sounds delicious, makes me hungry, and inspired me to post some images and notes on Great Pork Things I Have Eaten. First in the series: the almost pornographically juicy rosso tonkatsu from Hirata Bokujyou, Tokyo. (More on Tokyo eats HERE and HERE)

HODGMAN DECLARES CANADA "PERFECT"

Hodgman seems to be in Canada and is saying NICE THINGS about this mysterious giant, the "Brooklyn of the Americas." While I can't agree with his assessment, there are some pretty & good things about our northerly neighbor. I was up there last August working on stories and had a great time. Above, hiking at altitude in the beautiful Adamants mountain range, British Columbia. Canadian Mountain Holidays runs these heli-hiking trips. They are the best. This is a good way to be healthy, ride on helicopters and eat cookies.

I also wrote about the restaurant scene in Quebec City, which is celebrating its 400th year and has much to recommend it. I didn't get to mention the greasy 2am poutine. I will mention it now: It is fucking good.

Mahatma Mensch

Randomly: Mani Bhavan, Gandhi's residence, Bombay. 11.1.07

SFO - LAX

Left: San Francisco sidewalk, yesterday; Right: West Hollywood street sign, today.

STUCK IN MY HEAD

Eight days later & I am still saying "playa del coco." Make it stop please.

HOW TO EAT A MORNING BUN II

Morning. Tartine. San Francisco. 5/14/08.

HOW TO EAT A MORNING BUN

This is the morning bun. This is the morning bun I ate this morning. It's from Tartine on Guerrero. It is a thing of complex beauty. Orange-sugary, at once sticky and gooey and crumbly, with near-caramelized edges and a heart of golden butter. There are two schools of thought about how to eat it. I am the dean of both schools. One: eat the edges first, pulling away each gooey-buttery outer ring at a time, moving around and inward, leaving the nearly-self–contained cylindrical center for last. This is the prized shot-glass of buttery nectar. Two: Eat the shot-glass-center first. Then move outward in any manner you like. How you eat this depends on your theories about delaying pleasure or your feelings that day about the likelihood of a bus veering off 18th St, smashing through the window and killing you where you stand (you will have at eaten the best part first). This is glass half-full, versus half-empty stuff, except that the glass is full of butter. I once ran into one of Tartine's owner at some food-industry party in New York and cornered them to talk about my feelings about the morning bun. This is akin to (I imagine) going to a swingers club and running into someone from the PTA who wants to talk about your kids. One other tip: get there early before they are gone. One final tip: Never eat two of these in a morning.

SOME GOOD THINGS ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO

I've been eating a lot of pizza the last couple days but need to save that for an upcoming story. The parking and the microclimate crap still drive me crazy. But there are some good arguments for this city. Like donuts and sunsets and junky old 7-Up signs on corner delis and Hog Island oysters. A few others: My pal Bootsy, aka Matt Harput, and his rare, vintage and dead-stock Adidas, pristine Beetle and general life-advice. Go to HARPUTS.

Making coffee the expensive, halogen-powered, bamboo-paddled way at BLUE BOTTLE.

Solid sushi advice at SEBO.

COSTA RICAN BIRD MANIA

I mentioned the monkeys, but it was the birds that were really going ape shit. This doesn't really do justice to the aggressive aural overload of standing under this tree thick with the crazy birds. It was a wild, textured, LOUD sound. Set against the orange-purple sunset, it was how I imagine it'd feel to take acid and visit a pet store.

HELLO NEW (MOSTLY NON-IMAGINARY) PEOPLE

Big thanks to Blogger.com for naming this one of their BLOGS OF NOTE. Above: the big party for new Blogs of Note inductees. (Actually that's Paris, about a month ago. Seated dinner for two hundred at the Opera House. I wore a velvet dinner jacket. I have no idea what I was doing there but the champagne was good and plentiful.)

FROM THE FILES: WHICH PASTA LANE?

Three random signs from Bombay. The no pet litter sign is part of a series about street cleanliness. Also forbidden: washing your car in public. No spitting is from the train station. I still can't figure out what the illustration is meant to represent. And 3rd Pasta Lane? Whatever it is, I love it. (India. 10/07)

MARTIAN SUNSET

Sunset on Playa del Coco. Once you start saying "Playa del Coco" it is very easy to keep saying it all day.

WHICH ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER ONES?

In search of a fourth. On a beach somewhere. 5/9/08.

TOMORROW'S HISTORY TODAY: THE PRESENT

Not sure who this guy is. But I like him. There were howler monkeys napping in the trees by the beach, their white balls hanging low like fuzzy dice from a rearview mirror. I didn't have the zoom lens (or heart) to capture them. Four Seasons Playa Papagayo, Costa Rica.

TRAINS OF THOUGHT

Sensitive. Amtrak, Union Station. Denver, CO.


Sensible. London Underground.

SUNNY, BLURRY, BLEARY

Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica. Landed last night, woke up to this. Bad picture taken from hotel w/ "Photo Booth" on the laptop, then emailed, slowly.

IN AN AIRPORT THINKING OF DONUTS

Flying to Costa Rica today. In the Houston (pronounced like the restaurant) airport. SPEAKING OF DONUTS: The above is from Abu Dhabi this summer. Emerati are just like us.

They drink RC Cola in Dubai.

They have pork shops for non-muslims. Pork which is "ALWAYS FRESH, ALWAYS NEAR YOU"

MENU CLIFFHANGERS

Japantown, San Francisco 5/6/08

FRIENDS ON TV DEPT.

My old pal SHIHAB RATTANSI was until recently an anchor on CNN International. He was the one with the posh voice and nearly crushing air of seriousness & dignity. (Not to be confused with Richard Quest, that absurd meth-taking muppet that Mr. Martin and I have long been interested in/horrified by.) Over many years and across many continents, I've made a stupid habit of taking (or trying to take) pictures of myself watching Shihab on hotel room TVs. Shihab just moved to a new job working for Al Jazeera America, which somehow I don't think I'll get around to watching quite so often. So in tribute to his long service to wandering new-viewers, I have put together a little photo album.

Shihab fans and people who like pictures of people pointing at television sets, please point yourself to:
WATCHING SHIHAB: A GLOBAL GALLERY OF GRAVITAS

DRINK, FUCK, FORGET

Hello Nice People — 
Now a little back-story to this little blog. In January of 07 I found myself rather suddenly wife-less. After a period of sorrow and bourbon-soaked hibernation, I did what any injured, untethered, horny middlelatethirtysomething male newly unleashed in the world would do: I went a little crazy, traveled everywhere, stayed awake for months and months and got by on fun and distraction where I could find them. Then I did what any still injured but oddly triumphant, somewhat recovered and definitely self-involved writer would do: I wrote about it all in GQ Magazine. The headline and the pictures are a little sexed up. But this really is a story about loss and survival and an honest attempt to embrace the strangeness and pleasures of life's unasked-for second act.

The story's out in the April edition of GQ and finally up at the magazine's website HERE OR: PDF addicts may prefer to read it THIS WAY

Undisclosed Location w/ HODGMAN

Hodgman rightly takes me to task for not updating this thing. Here we discuss the situation silently in an UNDISCLOSED LOCATION. All I can say is: those are not his real shoes. AND: I WILL POST MORE FREQUENTLY. OFTEN IN ALL CAPS.

Sorry for the slow posting. More updates soon.

(Maui, 9/07)

(Delhi Airport, 10/07. I love this sign. This is a mere "inconvineance" in India, imagine what a real problem looks like)

before/after: italian dolomites edition

In & around Corvara and San Cassiano over the Brenner Pass from the Austrian border.
Beautiful mountains, exhilarating air, insane snowy roads, so much pork.
Next stop…Liverpool?

Fecalnomics (flashback 12/07)

Huon Valley, southern Tasmania:


Tamar Valley, northern Tasmania:

Sunday: to the Dolomites

On the road again

Home in NYC for a great month. Now it's somehow February & I'm back in motion. To properly re-discombobulate myself I stayed up all night Thurs, slept a few hours on Fri and took an early morning Sat flight to London. Tonight I'm at Yotel, the newish "pod" hotel in Gatwick. Japanese-style capsule hotel in a grim mall area of a British airport. Surprisingly good shower. Brought to you by the folks from the not-very-good kaiten zushi chain, Yo. Early flight tomorrow to Innsbruck, where I'll get a car, drive to the Italian Dolomites & eat speck as soon as possible.

The morning after

Survived 07. Pretty strange year for me. Some terrible—but so much good. More on all of that later. Happy new year, imaginary readers.

me too

Confused (Tasmanian weather report)
Headed home today from Dubai. Between London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sydney and Tasmania it's been a good month—and I have no idea where I am. I'll post more soon but for now a few random images.


Sandboarding in the desert.


Racing Aston Martins.


Hobart, TAS.


Binalong Bay, near the Bay of Fires, TAS.

SUN / MON / TUE

Tuesday: Dubai



Monday: London.
(Above: Eccles cake with lancashire cheese at St. John.)



Sunday: Wake in Louisville KY — find my courtyard and trashcans on the front cover of the Sunday NYT real estate section. Fly to NYC, shower, dump trash in said cans. Night: Fly to London.
Below: My brother Josh's head (left) containing the brain that invented his diabolical Thanksgiving tradition — Krispy Kreme pie; my head (right) containing the mouth that ate too much of it.

NYC (weekend)

Exterior: Charlton Street.


Interior: King Street. Vegetable lasagna w/ thinly sliced grilled zucchini. Not bad. Too tomato-y. Nothing two pounds of slow-cooked pork shoulder couldn't have fixed.

Maasai

Life of the Maasai warrior:
Pros = Colorful robes; women do the wood-gathering and hut-building; spears.
Cons = Circumcised at 15; diet of cow's blood and milk.

Pavement Life

"Overbreathed" — grumpy V.S. Naipaul re: Bombay air. I am missing it I guess, even while I'm relieved to be home. Or not so much missing it as thinking about it a lot. Or belatedly processing it. Or something deep.




More Naipaul: "The main roads there are wide, wet-black and clean in the middle from traffic, earth-coloured at the edges where pavement life flows over on to the road, as it does even on a relaxed Sunday morning, before the true heat and glare, and before the traffic builds up and the hot air turns gritty from the brown smoke of the double decker busses; already a feeling of the crowd, of busy slender legs, of an immense human stirring behind the tattered commercial facades one sees and in the back streets doesn't see, people coming out into the open, seeking space." (India: A Wounded Civilization, 1977).

Dreamers with empty hands/ They sigh for exotic lands/ Its Autumn in New York / It's good to live it again.

It's the nicest season in the best city in the world. Woke up in Africa, took a crap in London, watched sixteen bad movies in coach, was at Pegu by 10pm & at Ssam bar for pork belly buns and head-cheese terrine round midnight. New York is oddly, wonderfully, weirdly quiet after the insanity of Bombay. Silent and serene. Happy to be home.

Zanzibar - almost

My scowl and I landed in Zanzibar today but didn't stay long. Zanzibar is not—like say Pittsburgh—a place you expect to just spend a layover in the airport. But my flight to Dar es Salaam from the bush did stop here and, while I've really wanted to see Zanzibar I've been away from home for too long & just couldn't extend the trip any longer. I've had romantic notions about Zanzibar ever since I fact-checked a piece about the island some awful number of years ago — so I got to fly back to Dar thinking maudlin and common thoughts about travel anticipation versus travel reality and the horrible passing of time. Ah, well, I'll have to go back. In the meantime, I'm putting my head (which is made of a kind of pink, chewy candy) down for some rest before flying back early tomorrow. See you in America, imaginary readers.

Good Luck/Bad Luck: Tanzania

I've been doing fancy safari things in AFRICA for the past week. And liking it. Tired now — more pictures soon.
For now, two views of the topi, a big elegant antelope. Above: Standing proud in the endless plain. Below: Another topi, not so lucky, caught by two female lions and beginning to be taken apart by their very cute (and totally deadly) young cubs.