The best drink in the world

I don’t want to sound like an ass, but you haven’t lived until you’ve had some whiskey on ice from the glacier you’re standing on. It doesn’t even need to be good whiskey. It can be Famous Grouse, and it will still leave you with a weird and wonderful feeling of chilliness, warmth and delirium.

Zizou* and I arrived in El Calafate in southern Patagonia bleary-eyed and dog-tired. We’d stayed up all night drinking with new friends before getting on a 5 a.m. flight, which was unfortunately dominated by a very loud and boisterous group of French tourists. Despite being half-awake, with only one eye open, I distinctly remember hearing one of them say, “J’ai peur! J’ai peur!” (“I’m afraid! I’m afraid!”) as the pilot went for a second try at landing around the giant lake. I was especially surprised that I understood what he was saying, because I don't understand spoken French.

But we somehow managed to haul ourselves to our hostel, America del Sur, and to book ourselves for a “mini-trekking” trip on the glacier the next day from Hielo y Aventura.

We approached the ice by boat on water that was a milky blue from the sediment in the glacier. Marco, our guide, was waiting for us. As Zizou said, “Good God! You get off the boat and there’s a handsome Argentine waiting for you on the dock!” There is mucho eye candy in this country, mucho.

The guides tied crampons, giant metal teeth, onto our boots, and we soon marched onto the ice in groups of ten. The crampons felt fantastic—we could walk up steep slopes like we had been given Spidey powers. Our group was the “English-speaking group,” though it was mainly Germans and French people, which meant we got to hear Marco say in his very flat and funny way, “Now we go hi-gher,” with a hard “g.”

We marched up, we marched down, in a quiet single file, too awed by what we were seeing to say much. We walked around pools of water and looked down deep blue holes. We cupped water into our mouths, and I surreptitiously crunched on ice. The glacier, as smooth as the ice looked from far away, was made up of tiny little bits of ice, so that we were walking on a path of crunchy glass shards. We were told to wear gloves, despite it being a warm day, because if we fell, we could cut our hands.

There is so much more texture and color and variation in a glacier than I’d ever imagined. I had learned, from a book, that glaciers move, but nothing could have prepared me for the sense of movement beneath my feet. From the viewing balconies, the peaks had looked like giant teeth crowded and pushed against each other. Up close, there were also soft, undulating waves that reminded me of Gaudi.



Near the end, we marched up one last slope and found a little tableau, like a movie set, two small tables with glasses, a bucket, and a few bottles of whiskey. We stood around, finally laughing, while Marco poured drinks and we ate alfajores, the national sandwich cookie.



The whiskey tasted sweeter than any whiskey I’d had before. I could feel happiness spreading through me. It was the best drink I have ever had.

*My friend has asked me to identify her as "Zizou" to protect her privacy. I, unfortunately, am not a traveling companion of the great Zinedine Zidane.

Koreans love pork

There are a few things from my past that I am deeply embarrassed about. One is that as a teenager, long, long ago, when I didn’t know much about anything, I was a big fan of New Kids on the Block. The other is that also when I was a teenager, long, long ago, when I didn’t know much about anything, I spent most of my time eating out at TGI Friday’s. At least with my bad taste in music, there wasn’t much lost other than my dignity. But with my bad taste in food, while growing up in Seoul, Korea, I lost a thousand and one opportunities to eat a meal as delicious as the one I had last night.

Last night, my cousin Young and I went to 사월에보리밥 , or Sawhuleh Boleebap, which translates into something like “Barley Rice in April.” The fact that it has a name that sounds sissy in English is a hiccup of cultural translation; it doesn’t say anything about the food, which is as simple and assertive as the best Korean food has to offer.

Koreans love pork. We love it so much some people have convinced themselves it prevents hypertension and eliminates toxins. It’s true that 보쌈, bossam, one of the best manifestations of Korean pork, has a surprisingly clean flavor. It’s simply boiled, sliced pork, with nothing on it or under it or in it, not even salt. I think it also tastes purer than it deserves to because of the way we eat it. Like many Asian cuisines, Korean food values a contrasting balance of flavors and textures. If you’re eating a tender hunk of pork with glistening lumps of fat, you’re not supposed to douse it in gravy and eat it with potatoes. You’re supposed to place it in a crisp piece of napa cabbage or spry shiso leaf or even just a very fresh piece of red-leaf lettuce with a good piece of spicy bossam kimchi. Some people might even add a small piece of hot green pepper or raw garlic, or raw oysters dressed in spicy sauce, or just a bit of soy sauce to add some acidic saltiness. In any case, the raw, bright, fresh flavors in your mouth make that fatty pork taste almost as virtuous as salad. And it may even make your skin glossy!



While we ate our pile of pork, we also cleansed our systems with bowls of barley rice, into which we mixed various sautéed vegetables and red pepper sauce, a variation on the bibimbap many Americans know. I loved the nutty flavor of the barley, especially combined with the slightly bitter greens, the bean sprouts, and the chewy root vegetables.



And since Koreans rarely eat rice without soup or stew, there was also a very good bowl of hot 된장찌개, daenjang jjigae, a stew made from Korean fermented soybeans, filled with potatoes, squash, and cubes of firm tofu. Daenjang is a good example of a Korean food with the fifth flavor of umami, beyond salty, sour, sweet, and bitter, the unmistakable sense that a food tastes full.



We washed it all down with a comically large jug of 동동주, dongdongju, a creamy, sweet liquor made out of rice. My cousin, like the good Korean she is, had most of it.

I have so much lost time to make up for! I gained 10 pounds in Spain. I may just have to gain another ten here.

Death by the tasting menu

I’ve never had a tasting menu before. I’ve always understood it to mean a menu designed by the chef to show off his skills, providing a range of flavors in one meal. I never knew it meant death by gluttony, albeit a slow and pleasurable one.

I’ve finally woken up to the fact that I only have a few days left in Spain and even fewer left in San Sebastian. I’ve spent less money than I expected, and so it is time to spend my surplus! But the cheapo cynic in me still isn’t interested in spending 100+ Euros at Arzak, or even 55 Euros at Kokotxo. Another student at Lacunza, a retiree with enough money to spend at more expensive places, said one of his favorite meals was the 36-Euro menú de degustación at Casa Urbano. And so off I went.

On a Monday afternoon, Casa Urbano was quiet, just a few pairs dining in the calm, cream-colored restaurant. There was abstract art involving wood branches and cream-colored squares on the walls, nothing very interesting, but nothing very offensive either, and the waiters were very kind. Even if it isn’t a Michelin-starred restaurant, it declared itself still to be some place special, with white tablecloths, strong napkins, and even buckets of ice for white wine at each table. After all the inner strength I’ve mustered to enter bustling and noisy tapas bars solo, it was a breeze to sit down in that quiet restaurant by myself. I didn’t feel like everyone was having so much more fun than me. The middle-aged couple in front of me barely said a word to each other throughout their entire meal.

The menu was more intricate than I’d understood from reading it outside—you got to try all three appetizers listed, with the option of switching one out for the daily special; your choice of an entrée or two half-portions of two entrees; and then your choice of a dessert or two half-portions of two desserts, plus wine, bread, and bottled water. Of course I maximized my options, which meant I had seven plates set in front of me. So be warned, the following is very long.



But I’ll start with the wine, which was a choice between house white, house red, and txakoli, the very drinkable, slightly fizzy young Basque white wine. When I chose the txakoli, I was presented with the entire bottle, so it sat dangerously in front of me throughout the meal.



First came the pastel de esparragos y langostinos, a little soft mousse-like cake of pureed asparagus and shrimp, with a delicate little shrimp on top. It sat in a little sauce that was so good, I sopped it all up with my bread, little understanding what I had ahead of me. I loved that it was nouveau but still soft and comforting, though my first bite indicated that there was one big problem with the restaurant—prepped food isn’t properly being allowed to come to room temperature.



Then came the ensalada temporada de chipiron, a warm baby squid salad. I loved the crispy grilled legs and the olive oil generously dressing the squid in its own ink. But again, sadly, the potatoes were cold, though the olive on top was fantastic.



I swapped the third appetizer for the daily special, pimiento relleno con queso y anchoa, and was glad I did because it was my favorite of the three. The roasted red pepper encased a perfect cylinder of a firm, white cheese, but what made it special was something that I couldn’t quite place, that nagged and nagged me until I realized they had somehow caramelized an anchovy! It was the perfect combination of sweet and salty. I’m not clever enough to figure out what the white sauce underneath was, some sort of emulsion, but it was also good enough for me to eat the rest of my rather large roll. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the beginning of the end.



Ha! The “Gilda” de bonito fresco con refrito al vinagre de sidra, or a tapa of fresh tuna with delicious fried bits of garlic, little green peppers, and dried red peppers, in olive oil and Basque cider vinaigrette was not a “tapa” as described on the English menu. The “Gilda” refers to a famous San Sebastian pintxo of olives, pickled peppers and an anchovy, all skewered together and created in homage to the Rita Hayworth movie, “Gilda.” It’s supposed to be as surprisingly sexy. It was delicious, and the tuna was fantastic also, just seared so that the inside stayed a warm red. It sat in a literal bath of olive oil, but it didn’t overwhelm the simple, fresh flavor of the fish.



By the time my second entrée arrived, I was starting to feel ill. But I couldn’t stop; it was like I was in a trance. Besides, it was magret de pato al agridulce de frambuesa, or duck, one of my favorite meats in the world, in a raspberry sauce. I normally hate the words “raspberry sauce,” but the sauce here was delicate and tart, as well as sweet, and my aching stomach didn’t stop me from eating all of the butternut squash puree, too, which had a strong, tart apple flavor. I did leave one chunk of potato.



When the waiter came to take my dessert order, some part of me knew I had to stop, but the rest of me didn’t want to listen. At this point, I couldn’t plead ignorance of what this restaurant considered a “half-portion,” but I still ordered two desserts. The pantxineta crujiente “Gorrotxategi” was a flaky, crispy almond tart layered with a lovely rich cream. As if that weren’t enough, it was served with a scoop of nutty ice cream that I think was also almond-flavored.



Given how truly ill I was feeling at this point, I thought I should have some fruit: fruta asada de temporada con su subayon, or roasted seasonal fruit of pineapple, peach, and strawberries in subayon. Again, the fruit was a little too cold, but the “subayon” turned out to be a frothy, almost foamy (Spanish foam again!) tart sauce that must have had some milk or cream in it, because caramelizing the top had created a little skin. I wanted to die and I was drunk.

The waiter was surprised when I ordered my espresso before the second dessert arrived, saying, “But you’re still missing one dessert!” But I needed it immediately, some injection of caffeine and energy that would allow me to carry my bloated body back home and into my bed.

The really scary thing is that four hours later, I thought, hmm, I should buy some bread to eat for dinner with the duck pate in the fridge.

(If you’re wondering if you should subject yourself to this particular slow death the next time you’re in San Sebastian, I thought the coldness of the food really was a problem, with the insides of all the seared meats and even the roasted fruits being just too cold. I don’t want to sound like a restaurant critic, but a fine restaurant should not let that happen. That said, it was a lot of excruciating fun at a very good price, and if you don’t want to die eating seven courses, the a la carte menu is quite reasonably priced as well.)

I get it now

What a wonderful world we live in, that I can see Rufus Wainwright in concert singing Gershwin while wearing the knee socks and breeches of a Basque folk costume in San Sebastian. And how appropriately strange and alluring to eat pintxos before the concert in a city that values tradition but also loves surprises.

I walked into Bar Bergara with all the panache of an experienced solo tapas eater. I smoothly ordered a “copa de txakoli,” knowing I still wasn’t pronouncing it quite right but that I was getting closer. Then I looked at the jewel-like bites laid out in large platters, completely covering the counter. The counter, being plastered with pintxos, cleverly had a little shelf under the counter on which you could place your little plate of pintxos. That’s where I quickly took a stealth photo, and how lucky I am that it came out fairly focused because these were the best, most intensely flavored and most mind-blowing pintxos I have had so far.

The one on the left is revuelto, or scrambled eggs with roasted red peppers, with a little cross-hatch of roasted green pepper strips. An awesome combination of flavors and textures, the smoothness of the eggs, the sweetness of the peppers, the appropriate bright saltiness of the entire ensemble.

The one right behind is half a deviled egg on top of an anchovy on which is piled, believe it or not, shredded boiled egg white, topped with a dollop of aioli and a curled shrimp. I would never, never have thought of serving egg white like that, but it wasn’t just a showy trick, it was excellent. Again, so perfectly salty!

The third one is diced tomatoes and browned garlic tossed in fantastic olive oil, and then topped with golden fried onion bits and more green pepper. Like eating a bite of late summer.

The best one, I couldn’t even take a picture of it. Sorry, I already stick out enough, I can’t bring myself to wave my camera around. It was “foie gras con uva de oporto,” which I think translates as foie gras drizzled with grape-port wine sauce. So rich, so smooth, just sweet and tangy enough to make vow immediately to return.

To be honest, I’d enjoyed my pintxos and tapas up to this point, but I hadn’t really seen them as something worthy of extreme hype, just something lovely about Spanish culture. I get it now.

The challenge of pintoxs

Bilbao has been hard for me.

The city itself is beautiful. It has a bad rap, affectionately called “el botxo” or “the hole” by locals, and was known mainly as an ugly industrial city for years, until it got the Gehry-designed shiny Guggenheim 10 years ago, which, incidentally, is more beautiful than I ever imagined. But it must be “ugly industrial” European-style, because if this city were in the U.S., it would be advertised as a picturesque tourist destination. It’s not in the style of Salamanca or Santiago de Compostela, which can brag about their 500-year-old medieval buildings. Bilbao’s colorful houses and buildings along its Ria, or inlet from the sea, are only from the 19th century; perhaps that’s why it’s not considered one of Spain’s beautiful cities. But it has the Guggenheim; it has the Mercado de Ribera, the biggest covered market in Europe; it has fantastic public transit; it has the world’s oldest transporter bridge (very cool, trust me). Also, the river apparently used to stink, but I went for a morning run my first day and it smelled just fine!



Bilbao has been hard because here, it is undeniable how social Spaniards are. One of the things I love most about Spain is the way people go out, young, old, infant, all together, every night. A typical tapas bar is a place to gather with friends, maybe even your grandparents, and not a place to cruise strangers. Bilbao is chilly these days, but it doesn’t stop the crowds from standing outside the Cafe-Bar Bilbao or Sasibil or Berton with drinks and pintxos, Basque tapas, in their hands. Food and friends go together so well here they have gastronomic societies called “txokos.” (Anyone want to start a Txoko Brooklyn with me?) People have a drink and a pintxo and then move on to the next bar. The classic drink in Euskara Herreria, or Basque country, is txakoli, a light, fizzy white wine with low enough alcohol content that you can move from bar to bar all night without getting smashed. Spanish kids must get smashed sometime, but it must be after I go to sleep because I haven’t seen a trashed Spaniard yet, even though every person I see seems to have a drink in her hand.

As lovely as this is, though, it is not an easy society to fit into as a solo traveler. I’m reminded of what my friend Bianca said to me when I was getting ready to move to New York from San Francisco. “NY is not a good place to find someone, but it’s a great place to be single—at least you know you’re not the only one.” Spain, and a pintxo-focused city like Bilbao, is the exact opposite. I am the only person alone in the entire city!

So what was I supposed to do in this pintxo-paradise? I tried one strategy, going when it’s not prime-tapas hour and I knew I could quietly snag a corner bar stool. In Salamanca, I had forced myself into a café-bar and been rewarded with strong black olives and luscious chunks of jamon, its chewy texture giving it a flavor I liked even more than the thinly sliced jamon I’d always known.



Here in Bilbao, I started with pintxos for breakfast at Abando y Barra, one block from the Guggenheim. I think that’s a little fried quail egg. It was so adorable, it was calling my name like a puppy in a pet shop window. I wouldn’t have thought a room-temperature egg would taste good, but it did. The little sandwich was mainly a tangy tuna sandwich, a little fishy for breakfast, but fortifying for the hours I spent in Richard Serra’s “The Matter of Time.”



That night, around 7:00, I walked to Bar Berton, just down the street from the Pension Mardones, and ate this pretty trio. The croquetas just melted in my mouth. Good, but afterwards, I wished I’d ordered the “solomillo con foie,” one of the few that you had to order off the menu. Here, there was even space at the end of a long table and I sat down and scribbled in my journal, closing the world away from me.

I felt like I was training for a marathon. The next night, I had to push myself further.



I walked by Café-Bar Bilbao twice before I could work up the courage to go in. It was 8:30 pm and it was buzzing, people spilling out onto the Plaza Nueva, people ordering and carrying away 2, 3, 4 glasses at once for their friends waiting outside. But once I was inside, the array of colors and textures on the counter gave me strength. I wanted so much to try one! I ordered a glass of txakoli and three pintxos. Sadly, I was too embarrassed to take out my camera. One can only overcome one insecurity at a time, no? I’m not even sure what I ate, I gulped everything down so fast. I only know that it was very, very, very good. Café Bar Bilbao is known for pushing pintxo boundaries beyond tradition. It must be so, because I think one of my pintxos had raspberry jelly on it.



Could I really tapas-hop on my own? Would I go home slightly hungry or stop at one more place? It’s funny, once you do something scary once, it really isn’t so hard the next time. It wasn’t nearly so painful to walk into Sasibil alone, even if the bartender there didn’t have the kind crinkly-eyed smile of the one at Café-Bar Bilbao. I’m thankful this time I was able to take a photo and have a memento of the 5 minutes I spent there. The one on the right was some sort of chopped jamon with maybe a parmesan crisp on top, and good, but the ones on the left, of bacalao, were stupendous. I think they were rehydrated salt cod, not cooked and so almost raw. The one in the foreground had a little fried quail egg and sitting on top of that, a round slice of octopus. So deliciously chewy! And the one behind had some serious chili oil happening, one of the few spicy things I’ve eaten in Spain.

I’m in San Sebastian now—here’s hoping for less harrowing pintxos-eating here.

Santiago de Compostela is the rainiest, grayest, most beautiful city I’ve ever seen

(Just arrived in Bilbao, so I’m only one city behind now!)

For all my bravado in Salamanca, I arrived in Santiago de Compostela a little sad and pensive. I’d had too much time on the bus to think and I dreaded what I might think about for the next couple of weeks. But from the moment I first started walking around the city, I felt happy. At the risk of sounding hokey, I felt at peace. Santiago is famous for being the destination of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago for over 1000 years, and even though I didn’t walk for three months to get here, it feels right to be in a city where I’m just another solitary traveler looking for something.

And the food! I dare Bilbao and San Sebastian to beat the food memories I’ve made here.

Galicia is another corner of Spain that isn’t quite Spanish. They speak galego (or “gallego” in Castilian), which looks like Portuguese and sounds like mushy Spanish. So “plaza” becomes “praza,” “iglesia” becomes “egrexia,” and “jardin” becomes “xardin.” It also has a strong Celtic heritage, which means you hear Riverdance music everywhere and junk souvenirs with Celtic symbols on them. Their traditions are peasant traditions of square-shaped men and women fishing and working hard on the land to grow the biggest cabbages I’ve ever seen, judging from what I saw at the Mercado de Abastos. Thus, their food is peasant food, my favorite kind.



My first taste of Santiago was a café con leche and a piece of tarta de Santiago, their famous cake made of almonds, at Hostal Girasol’s café, across the street from my own lovely little pensión, the Casa Felisa. Eating anything so deliciously nutty makes me think of my sister and even though I missed her more than ever, I was happy to be eating something that reminded me of her.

And then I moved on to lunch. Casa Manolo is tucked into a corner of Praza de Cervantes and is clearly in more guidebooks than Lonely Planet, as there were plenty of pilgrims in walking sandals and Gore-tex clothing eating there. But just because a place is popular with pilgrims is no reason to sneer at it.



For 8 euros, I was given my choice of an appetizer, an entrée, dessert, and bread. Wine was extra, but a “copa” for a 1,80 euros turned out to be a carafe with a good two glasses worth of the light, bright local white, albariño, that was a true pleasure to drink. I’d been curious about white asparagus ever since I saw it in jars at gourmet shops in Madrid, but the white asparagus I had with olive oil, mayonnaise, and boiled eggs was nothing particularly exciting.

The bread, though, was the best bread I’d had in Spain. It was my favorite kind of bread, a good brown, floury crust with a slightly tangy, tender crumb, not as tough of a levain but as flavorful. It didn’t need any butter or olive oil, it held up so well on its own.



I had a typical Galician dish for my entrée, merluza or hake cooked with paprika and olive oil. The boiled peas and carrots were very peasant in being tasteless, but I was so impressed by how good a white, firm fish could be. It was simple, very clean, and so so good. Even the boiled potatoes were good.

I wrote in my journal as I ate, “I am so happy! I am so happy!”

Gracias, Jaime, gracias

Córdoba was an easy trip from Sevilla, a short train ride that deposited us quickly near the winding, narrow alleyways of the historic center, where the tourist-to-local ratio feels like it’s 10 to 1. But when we went just a few blocks beyond the Mezquita, the justly famous mosque, we found quiet streets lined with white buildings and colorful flowerpots hanging on the walls. Our favorite restaurant turned out to be just outside the old city walls.

We had already had an afternoon snack at El Olivo, two glasses of manzanilla, the slightly salty yet appealing sherry so popular in Andalucia, and a plate of fried calamari, but we went back for dinner because of Jaime, the tour guide at Casa de Sefarad a museum devoted to the history of Sephardic Jews in Spain.



Jaime will probably be one of my favorite memories of Spain, rivaling the sight of Becca whizzing around the Mezquita in a wheelchair to rest her lame foot. The museum is located close to the one synagogue that wasn’t destroyed in Córdoba, and although it’s very small, really just 5 or 6 rooms, Jaime has so much to say, you can’t help but leave feeling a bit heady. He’s a classic nerd, so intensely interested in his subject that he draws everyone in, like a black hole. But he’s not at all the shy, retiring kind of nerd. He’s more like the arrogant professor who’s well-aware that he knows a lot, and although that would be annoying in a friend, it’s quite ideal in a tour guide.

We learned from Jaime how the Spanish love of jamon and all pork products comes, in part, from the Spanish desire to distinguish themselves from Jews or, in the case of the convertidos, to prove that they were no longer Jews after their expulsion in 1492. He also told us how at the same time, many of Spain’s most beloved dishes have Jewish origins. He talked about Maimonides, about families buying documents to hide their Jewish origins, and about how expelled Sephardic families sought to preserve their memories of their lives in Spain. Whenever he asked if there were any questions, he was met by a stunned, yet gratified silence.

In the end, though, Becca had a question. After all the other tourists had left and we were chatting with him about menorahs in the gift shop, she asked for a restaurant recommendation, a place that was good but “informal.” “¡Informal!” he exclaimed. “Quel horreur!” (He literally said that in French.)



After we stopped laughing, he did recommend “El Olivo,” and thus cemented his place in my memories as a most knowledgeable person. The plaza, which had been sunny and pleasant earlier, was now golden with the light reflecting off the stone of the city walls. It was mid-October and we were sitting outside in weather that felt like the best of New York’s summer nights.



Becca loved her pisto, which turned out to be a Spanish version of ratatouille served with two fried eggs. There were plenty of tomatoes to make it sweet and lovable.



And I, I adored my chuletitas de cordero, or grilled baby lamp chops liberally salted with coarse sea salt. They were possibly in the top 5 favorite things I’ve eaten in Spain, so simple and so good. I could have eaten 10 more. (It also felt right to eat lamb after feeding murcillo or blood sausage to Becca earlier that day.)

When it was time to order dessert, I insisted we order two. I thought Becca’s choice of pears poached in red wine was boring and got tarta de queso, or Spanish cheesecake, instead. They were both good but the pears put Becca over the edge. I had to admit I’d never had poached pears so smoothly delicious, like eating pear mousse. I accused Becca, “I thought you didn’t like soft desserts!” to which she retorted, “I do when they’re this good.”

And then the kind old waiter brought us, on the house, glasses of ice-cold sweet lemony liqueur.

As Becca put it, “If I were Spanish, I would never leave Spain.”

Sun, beer, and fried food in Sevilla

Sevilla seems like the kind of place where people would eat fried fish.

The Rio Guadalquivir runs through the town, with most of the old city on the eastern bank, but with the old fishing neighborhood of Triana on the western bank. The city has developed smooth bike lanes that run along much of the river, as well as a lovely new bicycle-based public transportation system, Sevici, where you can pick up a bike from one station and drop it off at another station clear across town for about 1 Euro every half hour. The bikes are insanely heavy, maybe to keep you from being tempted to steal it, but they have sturdy bike baskets, good night lights, and everything else you would need to cruise around town. Brand-new bike system + brand-new river-view bike lanes = sheer joy.

So back to the fried fish. It’s such a stereotype that people in Sevilla don’t work very much and just enjoy life sitting in the thousand little plazas that dot the city, but cruising around town and sitting in those same plazas ourselves, it did seem sort of true. And that kind of carefree, easygoing attitude just seems to go with an affinity for fried fish, especially since fried fish goes so well with a sunny plaza and a cold beer. Of course, my view is probably colored by the fact that Sevilla actually is famous for pescaito frito, or a platter of assorted fried fish.

One night, Becca and I biked from our apartment on the western edge of the old city to the Jardines Murillo, the northeastern edge. We made our way to Modesto, a casual seafood-focused restaurant so big and popular, it took up two separate plazas and two separate indoor spaces facing each other. We got a platter of pimentos de padron to share, while she ordered the famed pescaito frito and I got the cazón frito en adobo.



The pimientos de padrón were on my to-do list because of an essay by Calvin Trillin in his book, “Feeding a Yen.” (Others say, “I did Madrid,” or “I did Granada,” but I say, “I did pimientos de padrón.”) According to Calvin Trillin, they come from Galicia, the state on the northwestern tip of Spain. They are local only to Galicia and are extremely hard to find outside of Galicia, as their season is also very short. In fact, I don’t even know for sure that our pimientos de padrón were the real thing. But I do know for sure that they were very good.

They turned out to be thin-skinned little green peppers, fried and then liberally salted with sea salt. It was like eating potato chips but better. They were the only green peppers I have ever really loved. Every once in awhile, and you have no idea when, you may encounter a spicy one, but they’re otherwise mild and easily lovable. Becca loved them so much, we came back our last day in Sevilla and ordered one platter and then another. They went excellently with Cruzcampo, the light and tasty local beer.



The fried cazón turned out to be chunks of tender dogfish tossed or marinated in some sort of spice that made it pleasantly salty and almost tart. We enjoyed this very much, too.

The famed pescaito, however, was not so universally loved. It was another dish that I ate most of, even though Becca had ordered it. There was quite an assortment of fish, from fried anchovies to small red, curled-up fish (had they died that way?), even a bit of fried fish roe. I popped the fried anchovies like they were popcorn and was thankful for my good appetite.

When we came back almost a week later and ate our two plates of pimientos, we also shared a plate of coquinas, these skinny little clams barely bigger than the tip of your thumb. They’d been cooked in lots of olive oil and salt, and I loved them, too.

I hope New York gets a public bike system soon. Mayor Bloomberg, do you hear me? We already have the river, if not the attitude. Would it be too much to also hope for a place that sells pimentos de padron, fried fish, and coquinas, and maybe an extra plaza or two?

Tacos of picadillo, a.k.a., delicious shredded pork

The Mercado Sanchez Pascuas, just a little north of Quetzalcoatl with its bright green entrances on both Porfirio Diaz and Tinoco y Palacios, is probably my favorite everyday market in Oaxaca. It’s not as overwhelming as the Mercado Abastos, or as colorful as Mercado Juarez, and it doesn’t have the steamy meat market-slash-taco stands of Mercado 20 de noviembre, but it feels like a neighborhood market, and increasingly, like my neighborhood market. It’s smaller than the ones closer to the zocalo described in the all the guidebooks, and on a weekday afternoon, you might even think it was half-empty. But every Saturday and Sunday morning, it’s bustling with people buying fresh blandas, flowers, tamales, all kinds of produce, various jugos, and even some barro verde, the pottery with the dark green glaze. Unlike the surly people at Mercado Juarez, the people at Mercado Sanchez don’t mind if you handle and pick your fruit yourself. Because it’s smaller, you can also see more clearly where people are clustering to buy their chicken or pork and gauge which carnicerias have the freshest meat. It’s also easier to notice who has criollo tomatoes, those heirloom tomatoes that have so much more flavor, or even criollo avocados with their enormous pits and a high, clean taste, if somewhat less rich and creamy in flavor. (You can find some fantastic photos from Planeta.com.)



This past Sunday, after a fortifying breakfast of chocolatle atole and empanadas, I enlisted my Spanish teacher and friend Lety to help in sussing out the best places to get the ingredients for the picadillo pork tacos I planned to make that afternoon. She pointed in one direction to indicate her favorite carniceria, but from across the market, I misjudged where she was pointing and had already started talking to a woman in a very smelly stand when she came over and whispered, “I meant that one.” I murmured my apologies, pretending I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted, and we quietly scurried all the way to the other end of the meat section.

I didn’t know if I could literally translate English phrases for pork cuts into Spanish, if pork shoulder is “espalda” or “pierna” or something completely different, so to our new butcher, I just asked for the cut of meat that had a lot of “grasa” or fat. “Ah, espaldita!” he said. He proudly showed off the layer of fat glistening on the piece of pork, and Lety nodded with approval. Later, when I asked her if I should trim some of the fat off before we cooked it, she said, “But that will remove the flavor!” God, I love Mexico.

After seeing the “picadillo” recipe in Rick Bayless’s cookbook last weekend, I had spent all week just thinking about it, when and where I should buy the meat, whether I should cook it on Saturday or Sunday. I had read the recipe over and over, charmed by the thought of taking shredded, cooked pork shoulder, and then browning it, scraping it up as it stuck to the pot, with chopped onion, a handful of raisins, a handful of chopped almonds, a little cinnamon, an even smaller pinch of freshly ground cloves, and a roasted tomato-pasilla oaxaquena sauce. But I’d never even tried it, so I was thankful to have Lety there to say, “Oh, it looks a little dry,” or “Add a little sugar.”

The picadillo was as easy as promised, even though it took about 2 and half hours to make, to simmer the pork shoulder with all its fat, to grind the cloves in a little molcajete, to chop and toast the almonds, to make the sweet smoky salsa, and then to cook it all together. But it was very laid-back cooking, though there was a moment when I realized trying to understand Spanish and chop almonds at the same time is the kind of multi-tasking that is yet beyond me. But otherwise, we chatted easily as she told me about the terrible people at her workplace and I told her about the horrible blind date I went on before I left New York.

Lety even showed me how to make horchata:

1) Carefully clean and wash about 1 cup of rice. Let it soak in water about 2 inches above the rice with some broken canela, the equivalent probably of 2 American cinnamon sticks. Let it sit for about 2 hours, until the rice gets soft enough that you can pinch a kernel in half.

2) Blend everything in the blender as smooth as possible.

3) Strain into a pitcher, reserving any rice-cinnamon paste for “atole de arroz.” (I only had a strainer, but I imagine a cheesecloth would be better.)

4) Add water and sugar to taste. Make sure to stir it up immediately before pouring it into a glass, as some sediment will sink to the bottom.

Incredibly clean and pure. I can totally see myself doing this in Brooklyn on a hot summer day. Other recipes I’ve seen say that you should add ground almonds, and I imagine that would be wonderful, too, as well as some pureed bright red, tiny cactus fruits with their prickly armor of skin.



I chopped up some jicama, radishes, avocado, and pickled jalapeno for garnish and heated up some of this week’s pot of black beans while Lety warmed and wrapped the tortillas in a towel. With the bright pink pitcher of horchata and a little leftover mezcal, we had a very colorful feast.

And the picadillo I liked as much as last Sunday’s supper of greens, onions, and cheese tacos. It wasn’t at all spicy—which Lety assured me was normal—but it had such a range of flavors, from smoky to rich to slightly sweet and nutty. It was complex and yet easily appealing, almost as warming as Lety’s company. Definitely one to add to the taco buffet dinner I intend to host when I get back to New York.

It's our last day in Puerto Escondido

It’s our last day in Puerto Escondido. Erin has already left for the airport, and Elena and I are spending the 5 hours before our bus in the most profitable way—doing nothing on the rooftop terrace of our hotel. Elena is in a hammock reading, or maybe even napping, and I’m sitting with my laptop facing the bluest ocean imaginable. It’s almost too mean to say out loud to my friends, who are going back to lawyer jobs in San Francisco, but I’ve been on a vacation from my vacation.

In this blissed-out town, I haven’t been doing my usual nosing around for superb food, and perhaps for my Zen acceptance of life, I’ve been rewarded with some of the most memorable food adventures I’ve had so far.



Playa Carrizalillo is the best kind of surprise. It’s a bit further west than Playa Zicatela, with its wide expanse of glassy waves that look like the purest and cleanest of blue-green Japanese ceramics as they break. Carrizalillo is not as obvious, if only because you have to descend a long flight of stairs to get there. The steps are solidly constructed and pretty, with flowers and suitably tropical plants at every angled turn, but the best part is only a few turns from the top, when you immediately see before you the perfect, deep blue, baby bay.

Little thatched palapas and restaurants line the beach, selling beer and shrimp cocktails. The restaurants aren’t particularly noteworthy, though I’m impressed they don’t mark up the beer more, and there are fewer vendors who come by, probably because of the steep steps.



There is, however, a leathery, old man selling mystery mollusks that were tender, almost buttery, and salty from the bucket he just caught them in. He called the bivalves “callos de margarita,” which after some Google research, Erin and I have decided they are some type of scallop. The conches he called “caracoles,” which I thought meant “snails” in Spanish.

The callos had a pebbly, almost spiny outer surface, and a deep purple ring around the pearly interior. He husked them right on the rocks, rinsed them in the murky seawater in his bucket, sliced them thinly and expertly, and served them back in their shells, with a fresh squeeze of lime and some hot sauce available, though it turned out for us to be superfluous. It was better to eat add just a bit of lime and taste the sweetness of the meat.

In classic Mexican fashion, he didn’t assume that Erin and I, who were standing over him almost panting with eagerness, wanted to buy a mollusk or two. We were finally moved to explicit action when another woman started negotiating a price for all the mollusks he had left. The fact that I might never taste a “callo de margarita” again is okay. It seems so fortuitous, so blessed, that we got to taste them at all.

We even had more nieve de coco, this one purer and cleaner, the more innocent version compared to the more sophisticated salty-sweet coconut ice cream we'd had on Playa Marinero. I am glad I don't have to judge which was better.

We had thought nothing could top Playa Carrizalillo, but two days later, we went to Mazunte. About an hour east of Puerto Escondido, Mazunte is a small town that seems to take the overflow from the hippies and nudists in Zipolite. The whole town consists of four or five streets in a loose grid, only two or three of them paved. It’s not much of a surfer town, and it feels even more laid-back than Puerto Escondido, which I hadn't known was possible.



We stayed all day on a little semicircle of a beach that had no umbrellas, no lounge chairs, only a lovingly ramshackle beach hut selling sandwiches, juices and tropical cocktails. We had brought a light picnic lunch with us, based on the tostadas de corozo I had gotten obsessed with after our lagoon guide, Lalo, told us about them. They were flatter and darker, a little thicker, and not ripply like your usual tostada of corn. When I tasted them, I knew immediately they were worth the long, hot walk to the market in town and dealing with the surly woman who sold them to me. They were just sweet enough, rich with the milk of coconuts, but completely dry and non-greasy. Topped with ripe avocados, fresh lime juice, and criollo tomatoes, crinkly like heirlooms, they whet our appetites for more.



It was so easy to walk just a few feet backwards to Babel, the little drink hut, run by a group of young, attractive South Americans, who were so at ease with their good fortune. The entire area was little more than 15 by 15 feet, with a few chairs, two hammocks, and an astonishing view of the ocean. Their mix tape was clearly a beloved one, as we heard the same Bob Marley song twice. We put our feet up and drank big, soda fountain glasses of “cucu melon,” 1 for 35 pesos, 2 for 50, which were made of freshly squeezed honeydew, a bit of mezcal, crema de coco, sugar, and crushed ice. So simple and so good. I kept thinking about it for the rest of the day, absentmindedly murmuring, “Wouldn’t that be a good drink for a summer dinner party?” I know it would console me back in Brooklyn, when I finally have to go back home.

Aqui, Casilda (Here, Casilda)

Such a declaration of place!

Whenever I ask, “Do you know Aguas Casilda,” everyone says, “Ohhh, Aguas Casilda, muy riquissimas!” I doubt Casilda is still there, as she would have to be 97 years old, but regardless, her stall is situated just a few stalls down from the nieve place I also love in Mercado Juarez, making that spot a place of difficult decisions. Even those who are squeamish about street food exclaim, “Y ella es muy limpia,” because the stall uses purified water. When King Juan Carlos of Spain and unspecified presidents of Mexico, governors, actors, actresses, and singers have come to pay homage to Casilda, who established her stall in 1926, who are you to be afraid of diarrhea?

I know all this about Casilda because the laminated menu has a history on the back. If my reading is correct, Casilda was practically a saint, as she is described giving horchata to thirsty, often penniless students, making her, “La Samaritana Oaxaquena.” I don’t think Americans have ever felt that strongly about a drink-maker. Even your biggest, die-hard Coca-Cola fan isn’t likely to want to confer sainthood on the inventor, whatshisname. Their pride in Casilda reminded me a bit of Korea, where the government catalogs every person with a traditional talent or craft, so that Mr. Kim the master of ceramics becomes “National Living Treasure #548.”

But of course, the most important object of pride is not Casilda’s history but her products, the aguas themselves. When I flipped over the laminated history, I could see clearly that pride of place had been given to one drink in particular: horchata con tuna y almendres.



Isn’t it beautiful? I’ve always liked horchata, ever since I tried it at my first taqueria with my first burrito in the Mission in San Francisco, but this version of Mexico’s famous drink made of rice tasted simpler and purer, and definitely less sugary. The tuna, which you remember is cactus fruit, made it rosier and fruitier, as did the chunks of cantaloupe floating in it. The small bits of nuts were definitely not almonds, but probably pecans or “nuez.” Maybe they ran out of almonds. No importa, I love pecans.

Sadly, it was over too quickly. I drained my glass in five minutes.

Random delicious things

Esquite: corn kernels that are grilled then boiled right on top of the grill, served in a little Styrofoam cup with lime juice, salt, chili powder, queso, and a little mayonnaise if you like, which I do.



Pepe y limonada: no idea if it’s Mexican, but my favorite café, owned by an American, serves fresh limeade and cucumber juice in a massive beer stein, which I like to order with carbonated water.



Queso de Tehuantepec: a bucket of fresh, salty cheese from the Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, in the isthmus of Mexico, that someone brought to my family’s home, and which I was lucky to eat a lot of.

Hot chocolate like I've never had it before

Oaxaca is famous for its hot chocolate, even though there are no cacao trees here. They are all in Tabasco or Chiapas, two words which have very strong and non-chocolate connotations for Americans. But Oaxaca is where chocolate is made, where it’s mixed into sweet drinks and savory sauces.



Mexican hot chocolate is one of the few things I’d tried before coming to Oaxaca. I’d first gone ga-ga over the hot chocolate at the Guelaguetza restaurants in LA, and bought a big bag at $15 a pop which I slowly worked through during a cold New York winter. Living far from LA, I’d tried switching to Ibarra, the brand that’s widely available in U.S. supermarkets, but something about its flavor had jarred me, too different from my memories. But I’d felt lucky to already have my very mollina, the special Oaxacan kitchen utensil for mixing and frothing hot chocolate, gifted to me by Lina last winter.

So when our cooking teacher told us “chocolate con agua” would be our first class, I wasn’t thrilled. When we were going to start cooking?



Our first day of class, in addition to visiting the markets downtown, we stopped at Chocolate Mayordomo, a store run by one of the biggest chocolate brands in Mexico. It was set up to look like a factory, and they had big machines that were churning out chocolate, or mixing chocolate with sugar and nuts, and a long factory runway of rolling tubes, but it seemed more like a show for tourists than an actual mill. At one end were boxes of chocolate from the floor to the ceiling, all for sale, and at the other end was a little “chocolate bar,” where cold chocolate was for sale. They brought out samples to try and little dixie cups of cold chocolate, which made me instantly suspicious. Had we been brought here with the expectation we would buy souvenirs?

By Tuesday, when our cooking was supposed to start in earnest, I wasn’t expecting much. Why would we need two hours to learn how to make hot chocolate, something I’d made on my stove so many times?

Stupid know-it-all me. When I got there, Soledad, our teacher, instantly put me and the others to work sorting and cleaning the beans and dried corn kernels. They were going to soak and simmer on the stove for use the next day. She added lime to the corn, which she said was necessary for tortillas and tamales. We were going to make tortillas and tamales? Clearly, this woman believed in making food from scratch.

She also began passing out recipes for “champurrado,” described in parentheses as “atole de maiz mezclado con chocolate,” one of those parentheticals that provides little clarification. It’s easier to describe how it’s made than what it is. I’d tried “atole” before, but not “champurrado,” a very traditional drink for weddings and other celebrations.

We began with dried corn kernels that Soledad had already boiled for about 30 minutes. These corn kernels were big, fat, and more white than yellow. When they had cooled, she poured the corn with the water into a blender, adding more water when necessary. She asked two students to stretch a cheesecloth between them, and then push and strain the pureed corn liquid through, leaving a bucket of milky white liquid and a big ball of corn mush.

The atole went back on the stove, along with a big bar of Mayordomo chocolate. More cooking, and all for a drink. While that was boiling, Soledad began preparing “chocolate con agua.” Oaxaquenos, she explained, make hot chocolate with water, not milk.

Water, not milk! Suddenly, I realized I didn’t know at all what she was talking about. I’d never had “chocolate con agua,” only “chocolate con leche.”



Soledad put the traditional one-handled chocolate pitcher straight on the stovetop and got the water boiling. She then added two big bars of chocolate and started mixing and pushing at the chocolate chunks with the mollino. This one was smooth and dark from years of use, not like my pristine blond one. She began rolling the mollino between her hands, and all of us took a turn, frothing up the chocolate before pouring ourselves a cup.

To be honest, my fat-loving heart had been dubious about the Oaxacan style of hot chocolate. Could it be tan rico con agua? Could it be as meltingly rich as the Mexican hot chocolate I’d made at home?

It was better. It was sweet but strong and straight, like a cup of great coffee. It wasn’t just the difference between dark chocolate and milk chocolate. It was bracing, maybe even fortifying. We dipped pieces of “pan de yema,” an eggy challah-like bread, into our chocolate. It was better than any coffee and donuts I’d ever had.

The class wasn’t even over. We still had the champurrado to drink. “Atole” is another flavor that I think doesn’t fit into an American’s lexicon of flavors. It’s nutty, corny, almost a little gritty. It reminded me a little of the nutty Korean powdered drink my mother had fed me through hot summers. It was almost as good as the chocolate con agua.