Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Blogtag:bizarre-blog.travelchannel.com,2008://52008-04-28T19:58:07ZMovable Type 3.35Delhitag:bizarre-blog.travelchannel.com,2008://5.352008-04-28T19:55:40Z2008-04-28T19:58:07ZGritty and ugly, elegant and mysterious, monkeys crawling on rooftops overlooking crowded city streets, Sikh temples, red clay mosques, poverty and sickness, beggars in the streets, serene parks, gracious hosts, outrageously good food…Delhi is a city of incredibly diverse character-...Andrew Zimmern
Gritty and ugly, elegant and mysterious, monkeys crawling on rooftops overlooking crowded city streets, Sikh temples, red clay mosques, poverty and sickness, beggars in the streets, serene parks, gracious hosts, outrageously good food…Delhi is a city of incredibly diverse character- an international mega city where travelers can be found in great numbers. With a population of over 13 million people it the second largest city in India (after Mumbai) and there are dozens of indigenous ethnic groups and religious cultures from all parts of the country who can be found here. Mix in the ex pats, and a thriving tourist business, and you can see why Delhi is a pretty potent cultural masala. From some of the best restaurants in the world to humble everyday cafes, the Delhi food scene represents the national cuisine.
Guangzhou: "Cooking Fresh, Local, and Best."tag:bizarre-blog.travelchannel.com,2008://5.342008-04-15T17:23:01Z2008-04-15T17:30:56ZFew people in the world have a more passionate relationship with food than the Chinese. And thanks to the large-scale emigration of Chinese from the southern province of Guangdong to elsewhere in the world, Cantonese is by far China’s best-known...Andrew Zimmern
Few people in the world have a more passionate relationship with food than the Chinese. And thanks to the large-scale emigration of Chinese from the southern province of Guangdong to elsewhere in the world, Cantonese is by far China’s best-known cuisine. Cantonese food originates from Guangzhou, the city that used to be called Canton. Today, Guangzhou’s food culture is known as one of the cuisines that worships unusual foods in China. In fact, a popular saying describes Cantonese food like this: “Anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies is edible.”
The city boasts the largest number of restaurants per capita in China. Combine that with some of the world’s most innovative chefs and countless rows of cheap food stalls on every street and you’ve got yourself one vibrant food scene. I began my trip with my favorite hallmark of Chinese food, a cuisine that originated in Guangzhou— dim sum. I headed to the best dim sum joint in town, Guangzhou’s most popular restaurant, creatively called the Guangzhou Restaurant. The tea service is quaint and served on ancient carts, the chicken feet are fried to make them puff up, then marinated, then steamed, and served with a black bean sauce. Eating the chicken feet feels like a wad of chicken skin slip-sliding around your mouth, then you spit out the bone. The congee, the dumplings, the noodles and the famous iconic dished created 80 years ago by the restaurants master chefs and duplicated around the world are treats no food lover should miss.
Street food is popular in Guangzhou, especially with the younger crowd and there are three main streets that people flock to for adventurous eating. The steamed buns, grilled squid and shrimp noodle bowls that you see everywhere are delicious.
Many Chinese like to relax with a cup of tea at a local tea house. I went to the neighborhood’s best tea house for a cup of Chinese chrysanthemum tea and a classic desert called double-skin milk. Double-skin milk is made by boiling fresh milk until milk skin is formed. After the milk cools it is separated from the skin. Next, the skin is braised with sugar until you get another layer of milk skin. The braised milk is poured into a bowl, and you have double skin-milk. Caramel-dairy heaven!
The primary components of many Chinese dishes are noodles. At one time, noodles were made by hand in homes and restaurants all over China. Modern machinery has since taken over that process, but I found a place where the art of making hand-pulled noodles is still practiced. And this guy above me is the dude in the show who rolled noodles so thin that he put three through the eye of a needle. At the Jiu Mao Jiu Noodle Restaurant, chefs fold, twist and stretch dough until it separates, as if by magic, into perfectly equal noodle strands. I got invited behind the bar to try my hand at this difficult technique. But making the noodles is half the job. The chef must now turn the noodles into innovative dishes. First off we fell in love with the Cats Paw noodles in black vinegar, and the spicy peanut noodles, fried noodle platters and noodle soup bowls were all flawless. This is a must go of you ever visit this city
Ask anyone who’s been to Guangzhou where the best place to find unusual foods is and you’ll get the same answer every time – The Qingping market. With over 2,000 stalls and 60,000 customers per day, Qingping is the largest street market in Guangzhou. Although it’s well-known by travelers all over the world, it’s not so much a tourist attraction as it is a fascinating look into the local Guangzhou life. That’s exactly why I love markets, to find out what the locals are bringing home for dinner and spend time with real people. A first glance at the market reveals things like dried fruits and vegetables from North China and salty fish from the south. A closer look exposes the infamous meat section where you can bring home just about anything that walks, flies, swims, or crawls including snakes, turtles, frogs, and all kinds of fresh seafood. But the section that peaks my interest the most is the medicine street, full of peculiar foods that will cure any ache or pain. I tried the dried lizards on a stick, used to strengthen the immune system. Next its dried seahorse for strengthening the kidneys. How about some dried deer tail to cure back ailments, or dried extract of tiger penis to enhance sexual virility. And finally, after all those tasty treats, I tried some dried puffer fish, good for digestion which i could really use right now! Scorpions and snakes, why did I ever say yes to this job!
I adore food that is all about “cooking fresh, local, and best.” This theme is the backbone of restaurants all over Guangzhou, and the Summer Palace at the Shangri-La Hotel is no exception. In fact, Chef Jacky Chan prides himself on using only the freshest local ingredients every night at Summer Palace. Known as the Genius Chef, Jacky Chan became the youngest executive chef in Hong Kong at the age of 18. Since then, he’s racked up 31-years of devotion to the art of cooking. With a reputation like that, I was dying to work with such an expert in his field. Jacky showed me how to prepare some of his favorite and most famous Cantonese dishes- the extraordinary and very seasonal hairy crab and his signatures, like sweet braised pork and jellyfish salad. This restaurant is wonderful, and the picture above does not do it justice.
In China, mushrooms are valued as much for their healthful properties as for their taste and texture. The Chinese incorporate a wide variety of fungi into their diet for specific medical purposes as well as for general good health. Chinese doctors have been using fungi medicinally for twenty-five hundred years, calling them the "fruit of the earth." Because of the enormous population in China, hunting wild mushrooms is almost impossible as they have all been overharvested. But there is one spot to find these exotic treats, and to get there, I traveled up into the mountains about an hour outside of Guangzhou visiting a mushroom farm where they cultivate unique fungi like Bearded Tooth, Wood Ear, Oyster, Velvet Foot, King Bolete, and Long Net Stinkhorn mushrooms. After a quick lesson on the tastiest morsels, we picked a bunch and brought them to the countryside restaurant located in the town adjacent to the mushroom field. Here they cook up the freshest mushroom dishes Guangzhou has to offer and the young chef who prepared all these dishes for me was talented in the extreme. Her version of steamed chilled chicken is still the best version of that dish I have ever had.
Guangzhou has seen its fair share of urbanization over the years, but the surrounding villages remain untouched. We made our way to a village about two hours outside of Guangzhou for a look at some traditional Chinese foods and cooking techniques. I love having an opportunity to visit a family who live on a farm and grows all their own vegetables and raises chickens and pigs. It’s a much simpler way of living and everything is guaranteed to be fresh as it’s grown right on their land. This style of life is disappearing all over the world faster than you can say Starbucks but on the menu tonight are some very interesting dishes made from every part of the chickens and pigs they raise. We picked vegetables for the meal, butchered a chicken, netted some prawns and feasted on 12 dishes…as always the meals I share in homes with real people always end up being the highlight of my trip.
Chile is happening.tag:bizarre-blog.travelchannel.com,2008://5.332008-04-08T20:51:09Z2008-04-08T20:54:07ZOf all the places I have visited so far this year, Chile is my favorite. You are always only an hour away from snow capped mountains or stunning beach-scapes. The wine scene here is second to none and is easy...Andrew Zimmern
Of all the places I have visited so far this year, Chile is my favorite. You are always only an hour away from snow capped mountains or stunning beach-scapes. The wine scene here is second to none and is easy to plug into, much different than in the USA or in Europe. The countryside is rustic, with teeny beach towns that remind me of the way Malibu must have looked 100 years ago. The people are friendly, the weather is perfect and the food is fantastic. I could live in Chile!
Santiago is an amazing city, great theater, great landmarks, superb restaurants, and a buzzing vibe is in the air, everyone here senses that Santiago is ready for it’s moment. Yet the rustic charms are still easy to find, check out the neighborhood Feast Day fest I participated in if you doubt it. Seafood is everywhere, and the meal I had at Ana Maria or the day I spent at Mercado Central stuffing my face with oceanic oddities is all the proof you need that is truly a seafood lovers paradise. I even found an edible invertebrate called a piure that I had never even heard of, let alone ever saw. The scene that made it into the show is extraordinary. Truly the most bizarre food we have ever encountered. But the parrillada restaurants that specialize in grilling and roasting all cuts of beef are everywhere, and believe me after a few days of eating barnacles, mussels, congrejo, oysters, seaweed and abalone I was ready for some red meat.
I ate my fill on the last day in town, even eating grilled cow udders, a very tasty treat, but the real meat eating lay a few hundred miles inland. So I took off for Fondo Collanco, a 10,000 acre spread a few hours outside of Temuco.
Fondo Colanco is a private ranch that I visited on the day of the Spring castration. We watched about 30 bulls get snipped and then retired to a barn for the day. We stripped the balls from the scrota, taking them to a giant plow set over an open wood fire for searing in oil, garlic, and chiles before parking them between two homemade rolls for hand sandwiches. The scrota were sautéed with onions, tomatoes and wine into a capullo, or sac-stew! After braising for 3 hours they melted into your mouth, heavenly. But the real treat was yet to come. The Mapuche Indians who work the ranch have been there for generations, working for the owners family for hundreds of years, a true feudal system. When they castrate the bulls, they make a sacrifice of 2 lambs. They string them up by their feet, put a knife behind their tracheas and bleed them into a pan. The blood is seasoned with onion, cilantro and lemon and it sets, into an instant pudding. You eat it before the blood even has a chance to cool. While we were eating this dish, called a niachi by the locals, the lambs were skinned and seasoned, put on a rotisserie and hand turned for 2 hours while we ate the ball sandwiches and the capullo cooked. Several salads of tomatoes and avocados were made and then we all sat down, lord and serf, guests and family friends to a feast that ranks as one of my all time faves. Moises and Christina, our hosts, were the kindest, most wonderful people I have met in years, and their willingness to invite me to share not only in the meal, but to see a ceremony that no one ever experiences outside of a handful of Mapuche, was the icing on the cake.
Anyone thinking of taking a break in a beautiful country, steeped in history, with vibrant cities and rolling country side, cool mountains and warm sea ports would be silly to ignore Chile, my new destination of choice in South America.
Variety... the spice of Bolivia!tag:bizarre-blog.travelchannel.com,2008://5.322008-04-01T18:44:31Z2008-04-01T18:53:39ZFlying into the highest major city in the world is a little bit of a misdirection play. You land at the airport, gasp for air and if you need it you avail yourself of the free oxygen tanks while you...Andrew Zimmern
Flying into the highest major city in the world is a little bit of a misdirection play. You land at the airport, gasp for air and if you need it you avail yourself of the free oxygen tanks while you await baggage delivery. The 10 minute trip across the plateau leaves you wondering where the heck La Paz is. After a few miles more you turn a corner and begin the descent down into the valley and can see the entire city in one magnificent vista, framed by snow capped Andean peaks and you can’t help but feel a spark of excitement. La Paz is simply thrilling.
Bolivia is an undiscovered country that offers a wide variety of climates, cultures and indigenous foods. The city of La Paz, at 11,200 feet high, is the world’s highest capital founded in 1548. A notorious haven for renegades and outlaws like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Che Guevera (all of who met their deaths there,) Bolivia is not your average tourist destination. And there are reasons aplenty to talk yourself out of visiting. But even though it’s the poorest country in South America, Bolivia is surprisingly self-sufficient with ample supplies of oil, natural gas and other natural resources. What they lack is common sense leadership that isn’t just anti American but anti anyone! Everyone dislikes everyone else in Bolivia. Discontent seems to be a part of the natural order of things here, but don’t let it dissuade you from checking it out.
The first thing I had to see was the cobblestoned Calle Linares and the famed Mercado de las Brujas, or Witches Market. Witches, medicine women, and soothsayers sell medicinal herbs, llama fetuses, dried frogs and armadillos. Along the street, you’ll find a variety of talismans and old bottles with potions concocted from animal parts like boa constrictor heads. I had a coca leaf reading done to discover what my future looked like and was immediately invited by the two yathiri to attend a ceremony involving the burning of a llama fetus to ensure luck with a new business venture. We got in their car and hit the road to journey up to El Alto, a devastatingly poor barrio that has become the fastest growing city in South America. We stopped and ate some llama jerky, choclo, the local corn that looks like it’s on steroids and the popular Anticucho de corazón: beef heart with peanut-garlic sauce served on a stick. Everyone but me had a cup of coca tea- supposedly it helps avert any possible altitude sickness. Sounds fishy to me. I think aspirin and water works well. Anyway any excuse these guys could concoct to chew more leaf, they took it. I think they reached into a bag every 5 minutes for more, and by the end of the shoot they were electric, vibrating, like mini tin figurines from that old football game where the players wiggle down the field when you turn it on.
I ate the next night at La Casa de los Pacenos, housed on the 2nd floor of an old colonial building which hasn’t changed for decades. They serve cow’s tongue in chili sauce, cow’s stomach, kidney stew, vein soup, penis soup and llama with chocolate sauce. I loved it all. There is a lively restaurant scene in La Paz that combines traditional foods of Bolivia and the dishes of many cultures. Pronto Delicatessen, a more modern restaurant, is known for its “Novo Andino” where the chef prepares traditional foods (llama, quinoa and ispi) that is then influenced by the Eastern technique of combining sweet, sour and spicy…goat ravioli with Asian curry sauce, quinoa spaghetti with coca béchamel sauce. This restaurant is called experimental by some, I call it confused.
La Lucha Libre, is Bolivia’s answer to wrestling as entertainment but with a twist—the contenders are all women who wear the Bolivian traditional dress of a multilayered skirt, white pumps, shawls and traditional bowler hat. The gym where the matches take place is in El Alto, the lower-class district above the capital city of La Paz and I got to watch these colorful wrestlers prepare for their ‘shift’ in the ring. These ladies are tough and oddly sexy at the same time, and they can kick your ass. What’s more I got to introduce them in the ring, a real thrill. Juanita the Caring managed to cheap shot me before the match even began, dousing me with a gallon of cola and sending me ass over tea kettle on to the floor in the resulting melee. Unbelievable.
In contrast to quinoa, which is the super food that Bolivia exports all over the world, the potato which originated in the Andes (there are over 3,000 varieties) and is still Bolivia’s most essential food crop is rarely exported to the States. One unusual variety of Bolivian potato is rotten, black dried spuds. These Chunos or old potatoes are freeze dried in a five day process which makes them look like sugar coated cookies. They are exposed to very low night temperatures in the Andean Altiplano (the high area above La Paz), stomped on to dry them out, then exposed to the intense sunlight of the day. Inside they are black and “nasty”. In this form they last as a long as 25 years. And they all taste that way. I spent a day on Emertrio’s farm which he maintains with the help of his wife and 10 children. They sleep with their livestock, brew beer to keep their cows happy, air dry their own llama jerky, and cook all their meals on a small little clay vessel that they stuff with animal dung and place a pot on the top of the flue. They mostly eat a farmer’s soup of broth studded with vegetables like carrots and onions, rehydrated fava beans called abbas that have been toasted directly on the burning dung for a few minutes before going into the pot, dried llama, and chunos. Lots of chunos. To call this soup earthy is an understatement of dramatic proportions.
Santa Cruz is Bolivia’s most populous city but it has the feeling of a small town with its lack of high-rises and tropical atmosphere. It is a far cry from the Alto Plano. It is hot, humid and is the gateway to the Orient, the Bolivian rain forest. People still gather to visit on the main square and restaurants close daily for siesta. With the largest international community in the country Santa Cruz is not the Bolivia of llamas and cholitas. Instead overall-wearing Mennonites walk alongside bearded Russians, goth kids, Brazilian and Japanese immigrants. We drove south of the city a few hours, stopping along the way to buy achacharu, small tropical fruit that are a seeming cross between a passion fruit and a mangosteen. I ate 4 bags in one day. We dined at a riverside restaurant, well actually it’s a small hut. You order, they go out into the woods, kill what they need to fill your order and return to their endless chuggin' of beer diluted with warm Coca Cola. We ate fish, twice cooked feral pig and armadillo. It was extraordinary.
Regarded by the Inca as the birthplace of their civilization, Lake Titicaca is the world’s highest navigable lake. We ended out trip by heading out to this sacred area to be a part of an Apthapi, or Andean picnic. First, we were invited to a home to help a family prepare their contribution to the picnic. Overlooking the picturesque lake, families gather to eat together, sitting on the colorful blankets of their region. Each cholita brings a different dish. There is Lake Titicaca trout, like no other fresh-water trout in the world and ispis, the snack food of indigenous people in the area, a tiny fish which is fried whole, salted and served simply along with vegetables, quinoa dumplings, home made cheese, broiled llama and chunos. All of the food is spilled out on the ground to be eaten as we crouch by the shores of the lake, trying to stay out of the driving hailstorm that is pounding into us. A shaman burns a llama fetus, we sing a few songs, say some prayers, the elders eat a few fistfuls of coca and the sun comes out. I forget how cold I am, and pile back in the van and go to sleep. I’m stuffed.
Bizarre Foods in Minnesotatag:bizarre-blog.travelchannel.com,2008://5.312008-03-24T16:16:19Z2008-03-24T16:21:11ZProving once again that the most bizarre foods and adventures are usually found right in your own back yard, I give you my whirlwind tour of my adopted home state, Minnesota. I could have shot an entire show in one...Andrew Zimmern
Proving once again that the most bizarre foods and adventures are usually found right in your own back yard, I give you my whirlwind tour of my adopted home state, Minnesota. I could have shot an entire show in one day in the Twin Cities alone actually. Tongue tacos on Lake Street at Pineda Tacqueria, fish maw and spicy pig intestines at my favorite Chinese restaurant (Shuang Cheng, Little Szechuan and The Teahouse all rock these dishes), homemade head cheese at Kramarczuk's. I could go on and on.
But instead I took my father-in-law's advice. He has insisted for years that I should check out the White Earth Re-Discovery Center and do some wild rice harvesting, so we did. The Center is where tribal elders pass on traditional skills to a generation that is removed from ancestral tribal life. The White Earth people believe that the Great Spirit brought them from the North Eastern United States to the North Western corner of our state to a place where the elders told me "the food will come from the water". Zizania Palustris is a plant native to the Upper Midwest lakes region. It's actually not rice, but a water-grass seed that is highly prized around the world for its singular nutty flavor. I spent the morning on the lake gliding in a canoe through the delicate shoots, knocking the seeds into the floor of the canoe while my partner poled us along. Some things to keep in mind: the shoots can be ripped out simply by tugging on them, many a lake has been stripped of its value by ignorant boaters and the act of knocking the seeds with long wooden sticks is purposely sloppy allowing much of the harvest to fall back into the lake for reseeding the rice bed. We cured the rice by letting it air dry, parched it over an open fire in a cast iron kettle by stirring it with a wooden paddle letting the stray grasses and outermost 'skin' harmlessly burn away. The raw rice takes on a smoky quality. The rest of the rice is jigged, or threshed, by dancing on the seeds until the skin separates completely and can be winnowed away by tossing the rice in the air, allowing the lighter than air chaff to simply blow away. We ate griddled yearling deer, the baked bannock bread and the rice were a real treat, and yes we ate all of the deer, the heart, and the liver, all of it. The strangest thing we ate that day was the sucker-head soup, a bland potage made with a repulsive lake fish renowned for its fatty and cartilaginous body. The heads are the prized resident of each diners bowl, you chew, you suck, you spit out bones. No one said this job was easy.
The Minnesota State Fair offers up an environment that is rich with some of the world's strangest foods, and for me some delicious irony. The foods that I long for the most in between trips overseas are either being judged in the 4H animal buildings or born up at the Miracle of Birth complex. In Madrid, Casa Botin has built a world famous 300 year old reputation on roasting baby pigs, if I were running things there would be baby pigs, lambs and chicks coming out of wood burning ovens instead of sitting under heat lamps waiting for the unwashed hordes to snap their picture. Sounds tastier than a candy bar on a stick don't you think? I settled for an afternoon sharing corn dogs with my pal Marjorie Johnson, and sampling the good (wild game brats at Giggles, deep fried smelt), the bad (cola cheesecake, ostrich on a stick, spaghetti and meatballs on a stick) and the ugly (deep fried Spam nuggets). I have to say there seems to be a disturbing trend over the last 5 years or so to incorporate new foods to the Fair menu simply because someone can put it on a stick. Sloppy Joe on a stick was one of the worst foods I have ever eaten. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should.
I have lived in Minnesota for 16 years, and have never tried lutefisk, and since it is an iconic food for those of us who get easily bored with everyday fare, I thought it high time I saw how the stuff was made. I stopped by Ingebrestsen's on Lake Street to see who they get their stuff from, sampled some lamb jerky, some blood sausage, some creamed cod roe and armed with a few insights I ventured out to the Olsen Fish Company factory to see how perfectly good dried cod is ruined by well intentioned Norwegians the world over. Well not really the world over since more lutefisk in consumed here than in Norway. At Olsen's they process more of the stuff than any other merchant on the planet, and they do the lion's share of their business at Christmas time. I have taken cod in about a half dozen countries and followed it through the salting and drying process and it was odd to see trucks unloading that same product onto the Olsen's back door, but there it was. The fish is re-hydrated in water and then in a water and lye solution, then finally with water again to rid the fish of the caustic acid. As the fish is exposed to the acid, its protein makeup changes and it not only swells and plumps to resemble its waterborne form but it changes its consistency, taking on its famous jelly like texture.
I wanted to try lutefisk in its territory, which meant traveling to Cyrus, to the Cozy Café, a neighborhood diner that doubles as a senior center and puts on phenomenal suppers on weekends in the fall, with lutefisk as the star of the show. There are only about 200 residents in Cyrus, but about 400 turned out for the meal on the night we were there, and we stuffed ourselves on potato dumplings, Swedish meatballs, and all those amazing Norwegian sweets handmade by dozens of farm country grandmas. The lutefisk is poached, then served with butter or cream sauce, paired with plenty of rutabagas and potatoes, nary a fresh herb in sight and the food we ate at the Cozy Café has not changed much in the 150 years since Scandinavians ventured to the upper Midwest thanks to the states Homestead Acts of the mid nineteenth century. I can tell you that the stuff is way more palatable than its reputation suggests, but the slimy jello-ish texture is frightful when it's in your mouth. Anyone looking to enjoy great home cooked fare and take in a real slice of small town life should head to the Cozy Café and visit with Jean Anderson.
We ate wild boar balls and all, at Lenny Russo's renowned Heartland restaurant, hunted for ruffed grouse with Shawn Perich on the shores of Lake Superior, headed out on the lake with Harley Tofte and netted herring for a shore lunch, and attended a meat raffle at a local bar. You get the picture... this is one of the shows that I most proud of. There’s no place like home.
A Taste of Russiatag:bizarre-blog.travelchannel.com,2008://5.302008-03-19T20:42:35Z2008-03-19T20:50:13ZMy first day in Russia was a disaster. We landed at the airport at 5-ish, and checked into our hotel, hit the sack and got up early only to find that the night before the Stones had played in the...Andrew Zimmern
My first day in Russia was a disaster. We landed at the airport at 5-ish, and checked into our hotel, hit the sack and got up early only to find that the night before the Stones had played in the town’s main square and we could have bought general admission tix for a few dollars each. I was crushed, that would have been a hot show to catch. But it was all downhill from that point on…
Everything you need to know about St. Petersburg you can learn at The Grand Hotel Europe. Almost ancient by today’s standards, the hotel has been serving royalty and movie stars, presidents and potentates for nearly 150 years. Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky played on the stage in the dining room, caviar is still served with breakfast. The hotel has a cigar bar, a chocolate shop, a caviar bar, a ballroom, real art (and I do mean real, as in 19th century museum real) in the hallways and rooms, security as tight as Buckingham Palace and oh yes, did I mention real Russian gangsters in the bar at night? Hands down this is my favorite hotel in the world and I would rather spend a night, or 10, here than in any other. Every moment of every day is spent with your jaw in your lap, either the stunning opulence gets you slack mouthed and drooling or it’s the history lessons from the people you meet.
The hotel, like the city, is both a throwback to the old Russia (The Hermitage, Catherine’s Palace and so on), the good ol’ USSR (check out the graying apartment blocks that stretch for miles) and the new Russia (Mercedes, Chanel, sushi bars and a middle class). Check out the prices at the hotel…Beef Stroganov costs a fortune, but it is no longer the most popular dish at the hotel. Tuna sushi at one of the hotels 5 restaurants is. And it is consumed in massive portions by happy customers sitting streetside, watching tall skinny supermodels wheel in and out of the trendy boutiques across the street. In some respects SP is not really like Venice, thecity it is often compared to because of the canals. These days SP is more like Paris!
The hotel takes up an entire city block, massive and solid like you imagine a Russian hotel would be, but the Euro-opulence is everywhere. You are greeted by a squadron of liveried doormen and security men so beefy and Slavic they have no necks at all, just heads planted on massive shoulders. Inside, a phalanx of gorgeous 20-somethings line up to present caviar and foie gras along with a flute of champagne as you stand to check in. You are escorted by one of the lovely lasses to your room, which reminds me of the bedrooms at Versailles, there is no other way to describe it, except that flat screen TVs rise at the touch of a button, retro fitted inside 200 year old artisanal cabinetry.
The Lobby Bar at night is where all the action is. Sitting outside of the bar in the ‘on deck’ circle are several of SP’s finest courtesans. They are not part of the hotels list of amenities but they service the clientele and the hotel feigns ignorance. For a thousand euros the ladies will have a drink with you in your room and the entire week we were there we watched spellbound as international titans of industry, Asian crime lords and famous faces all took advantage of their amenities. Russia has changed, but the freewheeling wild west vibe is still alive and kicking in SP.
One of local experts was a history teacher at a high school, his wife also works 9-5, and he still needs to hold down a second job just to make ends meet. Viktor nearly cried when he took me to the meat counter at the Kuznechny market, recalling misty eyed the days of rationed canned ham. We met local art students and film costumers who ate in restaurants and danced in clubs til the wee hours, waiters in humble eateries who had visited Minnesota (my home these days), young entrepreneurs who took us to their family lake homes for wild boar barbecues, Swiss hoteliers who have taken the town by storm…there is a lot of money in Russia these days and lots of upward mobility…everyone wants their piece of the pie.
So make your way past the call girls, sidle up to the bar, order yourself a beverage and look around the room. Count the bodyguards, sip your drink, listen to the world class jazz band playing improvisations on Cole Porter standards, imagine what the conversations are like at the 30 some odd tables scattered across the parquet floors. Tip Andrei well, and he might have you escorted up to the windowless Pool Room, where there is no longer a pool table, replaced long ago by the huge conference table where Premiers, Prime Minister and Presidents have met in secret for decades. Go back down to the bar, and toast the good old days marveling at the enigma, wrapped inside a puzzle inside a conundrum that is still Russia.
How do I love thee, let me count the ways…tag:bizarre-blog.travelchannel.com,2008://5.292008-03-11T14:16:10Z2008-03-11T13:36:48ZI fell in love with Iceland last summer. Here are a few of the reasons why…. Amphetamine Effect…long days and short nights (2 hours) mean plenty of time to get things done. After 17 hours of daylight, you don’t even...Andrew Zimmern
I fell in love with Iceland last summer. Here are a few of the reasons why….
Amphetamine Effect…long days and short nights (2 hours) mean plenty of time to get things done. After 17 hours of daylight, you don’t even feel tired, you eat dinner, grab a steam and a schvitz in a public bath and shazam, you are ready to hit the hot spots all night, I mean twi-light, long. I have never had as much energy as I did during my week in Iceland.
Fish…the best seafood I have tasted in years has been the local catch from the docks in and around the Icelandic sea coast. But then again the lambs eat the freshest grass, the cows drink the cleanest water, the fish swim in the purest seas…Icelandic food tastes better because it is. Simple idea really.
Eat Out…Vox, Siggi Hall, The Sea Baron… from high brow dining to street food gluttony; there are more good restaurants in Rekyavik than in many American cities 5 times the size. The local chefs cook with verve, a respect for tradition and an amazing lack of self consciousness. And the food is killer almost anywhere you go. Even the Rekyavik bus depot serves good food.
Dairy…the cream, the milk, the fresh handmade Icelandic skyr sweetened with local honey is something I will never forget. Not yogurt, but really a cheese, eaten fresh, whipped until silky smooth. There is no replicating it, you can make a great version yourself, and many local dairy farmers all over the country have similar farmhouse recipes, but there is no getting around the simple fact that skyr stands alone in the Dairyland Valhalla.
Fermented Foods…from pickled herring to cured salmon, from dried fish to hakarl, the national dishes of Iceland are predominantly cured, salted, fermented or putrified seafood. You gotta love that! The drive out to Bjarnhofn takes only a few hours but is dominated by ancient lava fields, miles of wildflower beds, waterfall speckled hillsides, cascading mountain fed streams, breathtaking ocean vistas…the usual. You wish the ride took 10 hours not 3. At the end of the line is a 5th generation rotten shark merchant who knows a thing or two about hakarl, and his dad will treat you to a piece of dried cod dipped in seal oil if you ask nicely.
Natural Wonders… Iceland is called the Land of Fire and Ice for a reason. Glacial splendor, world class geysers, raging rapids, active lava flow, black sand beaches, it’s the inverse of Hawaii. Take a horse back camping trip, it’s a local excursion that is very popular and the best way to see the backcountry. I am still thinking of the day I spent in the saddle. We trotted across verdant valleys, through tidal estuaries stretching to the horizon, across canyons and along mile high ice fields…all in one day.
Puffin…but still, the best thing about Iceland is the Westmann Islands. Volcanic, remote, grass topped cliffs, killer whales, seals, and billions of little birds that taste great on the grill. My kind of place.
Beijing Babytag:bizarre-blog.travel.discovery.com,2008://5.282008-03-03T16:26:14Z2008-03-05T15:19:00ZI love China … the crowds, the smog, the food, the scenesters, the temples, the Forbidden City, the shopping, the growth, the confusion, the serenity, the people ... I love China. Ten years ago, check that, even 5 years ago...Andrew Zimmern
I love China … the crowds, the smog, the food, the scenesters, the temples, the Forbidden City, the shopping, the growth, the confusion, the serenity, the people ... I love China.
Ten years ago, check that, even 5 years ago on my second visit there, I only saw the tourists China, but mostly that was because that’s all there was to see. Not that there was only a tourists China that was extant, but because the real China was hard to access in Beijing. Today, with an explosively developed middle class, there are stores and hotels, restaurants and nightclubs, young scenesters in the parks and business men on lunch breaks. Beijing is a happening baby.
Red Capitol Club and the Flying Red Flag restaurant are 2 great eateries embracing the kitsch of the Cultural Revolution. These are popular eatertainment venues that real Chinese go to for food and a fond nostalgic look back at Mao’s China. The food is better at The RCC than the FRF. The RCC is also a great place to catch government ministers out on the town with their mistresses and bodyguards don’t miss it.
Guo Li Zhuang is the world’s first restaurant specializing in the male anatomy of over 30 different creatures. Business men go here to eat for sport and they sit in private rooms munching away on seal penis soup, which you can also try for 300$ a bowl. I go for the cheaper donkey or yak penis. Tastier and cheaper. Speaking of donkey, head out of the city to the Chaoyang district, site of the 2008 Olympics and check out the donkey restaurants there … it’s the other red meat. And it’s really good.
But save your appetite for the Donghuamen night market. If you want some serious street eats, this is the place. Simmering beef balls, hand rolled fungus and roast pork pancakes, grilled squid skewers, sea urchins on the half shell…its all here. I could eat on this street every night of the week, and it’s the perfect diversion before a night out on the town and you must go to Philippe Starck’s LAN club. Starck designed the place but the food is amazing, the crowd is A list and the bars, music and hostesses are off the hook. A night at LAN makes you feel like you are in Paris or London, and that speaks volumes about Beijing and where it’s at these days.
See you at the Olympics!
Andrew's Blog in 2008tag:bizarre-blog.travel.discovery.com,2008://5.272008-02-12T21:35:21Z2008-03-05T15:19:00ZHello Andrew Zimmern fans. Keep reading and posting comments. Andrew will return later this season with all new posts. Season 2 of 'Bizarre Foods' starts Tuesday, March 4 at 10 p.m. ET/PT!...Ranihttp://travel.discovery.com
Hello Andrew Zimmern fans. Keep reading and posting comments. Andrew will return later this season with all new posts.
Season 2 of 'Bizarre Foods' starts Tuesday, March 4 at 10 p.m. ET/PT!
Vietnamtag:bizarre-blog.travel.discovery.com,2007://5.212007-08-13T18:35:36Z2008-03-05T15:19:00ZVietnam is a country on the move. A thousand years of Chinese rule, a hundred years of the French, a couple decades of us. These people have something to prove. Vietnam is a country essentially self-created over the last thirty...Andrew Zimmern
Vietnam is a country on the move. A thousand years of Chinese rule, a hundred years of the French, a couple decades of us. These people have something to prove. Vietnam is a country essentially self-created over the last thirty years, but nobody in this long, toothpick-thin nation is interested in abandoning any of their traditional food pathways. In fact, modern restaurant culture is just beginning here in Vietnam and it seems to be solely the domain of the business traveler and tourist. But I digress.
But let me tell you, the best part of Snake Festival is negotiating your way into a snake restaurant, picking out your snake—I splurged and went for cobra—then having it disappear to the kitchen after being bled and gutted tableside. The tasty results? Crispy snake skin, snake spring rolls, sautéed snake with chilies and lemon grass, a delicious but benign ending to a meal that begins with the ceremonial reptilian execution.
I love street food. And in Vietnam, they have the best street food culture in the world. At the top of the food chain are the small four to six seat “restaurants” that are really no more than a portable kitchen roughly three feet square around which the chef and owner tosses a couple of plastic stools for patrons to squat. My favorites? The pho, the roasted sparrows, the snail vendors, and the patty crab pounding soup and noodle salad makers. Of course, the best street foods are in and around the amazing markets that are seemingly on every street corner. In fact, the Vietnamese shop more than any other people in the world. Vietnamese cooks and homemakers will shop three or four times a day—literally going to market in between every meal period. To say the food in Vietnam is fresh is the understatement of the century.
The most fun restaurant in Hanoi is Bobby Chinn’s. This guy is a showman in the extreme and hanging out for an afternoon cooking and eating with him was an experience that I’ll never forget. Just to let you know the kind of guy he is, we spent the last half hour of our visit together playing Rolling Stones cover songs on the steps leading up into his restaurant with a hat between our legs. Begging doesn’t become me, but it was fun. If you eat at his restaurant in Hanoi, don’t skip the crab salad and go late at night where the girl watching and the people ogling is without peer.
The best experience of every trip are always the food making adventures that I like to go on. In Vietnam, after a day cruising Ha Long Bay on a hundred year old Chinese junk, we went to the island of Cat Hai where they have been making fish sauce the same way for a thousand years. Every step of the process is a hands on affair. What do I mean by that? The shrimp and small fish and squid that are used to create the fish sauce are hauled in by hand, they are cleaned by hand they are chopped up and soaked in handmade clay pots for a year they are filtered and the sludge is distilled, hauled by wheelbarrows to the giant strainers. They make five thousand bottles a day. There is no where in the world that I can think of where a Rolls Royce product of this type is still made entirely the old fashioned way without an electrical socket or laptop within twenty miles. Wandering the island for the afternoon, in a town with no cars where there is no noise, no electricity poles, no phone wires, where little kids are diving off a muddy bridge to pry oysters off the decades old cement supports, sipping fresh coconut juice while we wait for lunch of island delicacies—this is still one of the best and most memorable afternoons on an all-around incredible trip.]]>
Ask Andrew!tag:bizarre-blog.travel.discovery.com,2007://5.202007-07-30T18:10:12Z2008-03-05T15:19:00ZBlog Posters, Thank you for all your wonderful comments. New Blogs from Andrew are coming shortly. Andrew is currently shooting for the new season and his schedule is crazy! Check out Ask Andrew under 'Talk About the Show' on the...Ranihttp://travel.discovery.comAsk Andrew under 'Talk About the Show' on the message boards. When Andrew comes home from traveling he'll answer viewer questions there and do his best to respond to your questions here in the Blog.
Thanks again!
'Bizarre Foods' Online Producer
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Spaintag:bizarre-blog.travel.discovery.com,2007://5.142007-03-19T21:54:23Z2008-03-05T15:19:00ZWe Arrive Flight to Amsterdam: Shedd’s butter spread and no cheese or ham on my mock McMuffin - I guess cutbacks are rampant on NWA and the only thing missing in coach were the chickens on people's laps … Sunday...Andrew Zimmern
We Arrive
Flight to Amsterdam: Shedd’s butter spread and no cheese or ham on my mock McMuffin - I guess cutbacks are rampant on NWA and the only thing missing in coach were the chickens on people's laps …
Sunday I took off for Spain with five of us in our U.S. contingent, including Shannon, our producer from Tremendous Entertainment, the Minnetonka-based production company charged with keeping me in line. Tremendous CEO, Colleen Needles Steward is along for the trip; we have a PA and a shooter here as well; and two Spanish TV producers are acting as fixers for the week, keeping wheels greased, scouting locations, translating and the like.
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The Spanish are my kind of folk, and here in Madrid, the restaurants outnumber every Madrileno by about 3 to 1. They eat every few hours in Madrid - each business or social conversation is an excuse for snacking. My kind of culture, to say the least. Apparently, my last episode of Bizarre Foods of Asia has been airing constantly on Travel Channel's European sister stations because all day long we have met groups of tourists from other countries who have seen the program recently, including a bunch of Welsh ladies from Cardiff who cheered me on in the Plaza Mayor as I searched relentlessly for bull's balls. It appears to be my Don Quixote moment so far - no criadillas... yet!
The Last Coca-Cola in the Desert
Tuesday morning, up and at 'em and on to Casa Botin, the oldest restaurant in the world! It is ecstatically scenic, on a small cobblestone street a block off the Plaza Mayor, the site of most of the heretical trials and subsequent burnings during the Spanish Inquisition. Botin's well-used and justifiably famous wood-burning oven pumps out 40 baby pigs and a dozen or so lambs each day, and has done so without interruption since 1730. There are several small dining rooms in an ancient building with tilted stairs and window casements, servers that seem pulled straight out of central casting, and happy customers slurping down big bowls of squid braised in their own ink, stewed partridge - the classics. I spent my day in their granite-floored kitchens, piling logs into the stove, cooking with the all-male Botin staff (none are younger than 60), and scarfing down as much pig as I could handle. Apparently, they were quite pleased by the gusto with which I prised open the skull of the pig and made quick work of the ears, snout, cheeks and brain, saving the tongue for last. Aggressive eaters like myself are thought of quite fondly in Spain.
Then on to La Bola, a 170-year-old tavern on a quiet little street ... Madrid used to be a town of taverns; there were 800 of them a hundred years ago, now they number under 100. Sad really. La Bola is a stunning tavern with some gorgeous and colorful woodwork, and an all-female kitchen with the median age I would have to peg at about 70. But everyone heads there for one reason only: the Cocido Madrileno, a clay pot/pitcher filled with meats, poultry, sausages, vegetables and chick peas topped off with broth. The pitcher sits upright, percolating really, on a wood-burning stove, simmering for hours. Then the pitcher comes to your table, the broth is poured from the pitcher into a bowl filled with noodles to make a lovely soup, then the boiled dinner is tumbled out onto a plate for the second course, and served with sea salt, pickled hot peppers, and a puree of smoked and fresh peppers. They serve hundreds of these a day. On to the callos, a tripe stew that is cooked with chunks of blood sausage (morcilla) and other smoked meats. Quite good.
That night a tapas crawl saw us wandering around Madrid with a few locals, checking out some unusual taparias. One of our stops was the crumbling and ancient Taberna Antonio Sanchez. Two hundred years ago, Antonio's dad was a bullfighter who opened the place after suffering a career-ending goring (his first kill is mounted in the bar) and he named the place after his son. Subsequently, over the last two centuries, the place has been owned by a succession of bullfighters, winding up today in the hands of my new best buddy, Paco. He led me about the tavern, showing me the tables of all the famous writers who came there to eat and drink and write in the heat of the day and late into the evening. The deacutecor is all original - tables, chairs, even the wine glasses are ancient. Paco showed me his bulls on the wall and a few of his scars, and then fed me a bowl of the best callos I had eaten all day - trust me, I have become a tripe stew expert. I am still coming down from the high of sitting in Paco's tavern, the roads silent all around us (the streets are too small for cars). This ancient working-class neighborhood is changing quickly. Immigrant waves settle into the cheaper flats; developers take over the more charming buildings; modernity inexorably creeps in and Paco sits, waiting for the customers whose ranks are thinning rapidly. Madrid’s young people are less interested in tavern life than in the nightclubs on the other side of town, and the new generation of bullfighters are more concerned with being rock stars than they are in becoming future tavern owners. So Paco soldiers on, making the best callos in all of town and giving anyone who will listen to him a history lesson from a man who truly lived and loved in a way that does not exist in today's pop-culture disposable world. So He sits, smiling as we leave, and my friend Andres and I stumble on to the next taparia. I ask him who will take over when Paco dies, who's the next bullfighter-turned-bar owner, and he says there is no one, and that when Paco goes, the tavern goes. The tavern is Paco, he insists - his stories, his stew, his stewardship ... and in a few years there will be no tavern left, making Paco the last bottle of Coca-Cola in the desert.
The Barnacle Bill
Today it was off to the swank side of Madrid, in the posh Serrano shopping district. We shot all morning in the trendy food stalls of the Mercado de la Paz, a 200-stall market with butchers, seafood stalls, fromagerias and so on. We ate criadillas (bull's balls) and tripe stew with the truckers and stevedores in the small cafeacute inside the market where the bar was four deep at 10 in the morning. The salt cod; cured, pressed and dried tuna roe; and the incredible array of fish and shellfish in the stalls was staggering. We saw plenty of percebes, the small gooseneck barnacles that everyone loves, and hundreds of species of langosto, crab and small rockfish. For a landlocked burg, Madrid has an insatiable appetite for seafood, one that harkens back to the days of the first two Philips, who were both fish fanatics. Madrilenos still tell stories about the royal coaches perambulating from the palace to the seashores and back, their carts overflowing with fresh catch for the royal kitchens. And this was hundreds of years ago!
Today, the chic ladies who lunch, wealthy businessmen, the rich and famous, celebrities of all types or just curious gastronomes fall into lunch at La Trainera, the 40-year-old grandmama of Madrid's great seafood restaurants, and the one that Francis Bacon so famously touted back in the day. We had the opportunity to roll in there about three hours before the lunch crowds packed the place, and shoot in the kitchens of this remarkable eatery that is right around the corner from the Mercado (La Trainera is on Lagasca 60).
The small, humble, blue and white storefront with the cute shutters is a pretty impressive statement about the restaurant all on its own. No bells, no whistles, just great food and a reputation for perfection ... but the stream of famous faces and the jacketed doorman out front let you know you are in for a special experience. All the fish and shellfish is gathered from small fishing co-ops sprinkled all over Spain, many from Galicia, the famous coastal city in the northwest corner of the country. When you walk in to the restaurant, you see the awesome iced seafood display, and many customers find that without a reservation you are only able to avail yourself of a meal at the bar. But that's not a bad thing since you can just keep pointing at what looks good in the case. Be careful: Almost all the goodies, from the oysters to the red prawns to the cigalas (langostos), buey crab, lobsters, percebes and the like, are sold by the gram, and an overeager diner can quickly pile up quite a bill. I had the opportunity to sit in the kitchen with the chef, where he keeps many pots of court bouillons simmering for his percebes, lobsters and crabs, and a few massive griddles for the giant prawns seared "a la plancha" served pil-pil style, drizzled with the herb-oil-chile-garlic sauce that the Basques are renowned for. Be sure to try the rodaballo, a Spanish turbot that is griddled and served with a sherry vinegar pan sauce - it's the house specialty. The percebes (gooseneck barnacles), also known locally as "dragons' feet" because of their odd lizard-skin look, are sold in 200-gram increments and can wholesale for over $50 a pound, so I tried my best to be respectful. However, standing in the kitchen with the chef and the restaurant's septuagenarian owner (who kept hitting on our 20-something Spanish production fixer), I joyfully tucked into a mammoth platter of the little buggers, which taste like a lobster-kissed, butter-tender clam. You split the skin at the base of the barnacle where it attaches to the rocks, then using the foot like a handle you slide the edible cylinder of flesh out from the sheathing and suck it down. Then you can split apart the feathery foot and eat the small kernel of meat inside the top of the percebe ... heaven. We went upstairs and ate Mediterranean clams on the half shell, langostos, three types of lobster, cigalas, giant red prawns, rodaballo, buey crab and a flurry of desserts and cheeses. Put La Trainera on your list of places not to miss next time you are in Madrid. But bring a large wallet ... Had we been paying the full freight, my little snack there, albeit enough for two to three persons, would have cost almost 500 Euros.
We raced into our van after shooting the lunch, still reeking of shellfish, and sped to Madrid's Barajas Airport (the new Terminal 4 is an AMAZING piece of architecture). We checked in as quickly as we could with our piles of bags and video equipment and took off for Barcelona, one of the most exciting cities in the world. More on that city and my visit to El Bulli later in the week.
Hey Tyra, What's Up Girlfriend ...
A quick flight from Madrid to Barcelona put us in this idyllic city on the northeast coast of Spain in time for me and the crew to check in to our hotel and grab some dinner in the lobby restaurant. Barcelona is the cultural capital of Catalonia, the most forward-thinking architectural town in Europe (Gaudi has more buildings and sculptures here than anywhere else in the world), the home of the 2006 Premier League soccer champs and the stomping grounds of dozens of the most innovative chefs in the West, most of whom have worshipped at the culinary teat of high-powered gastro-preneurs like Juan Maria Arzak and Ferran Adria.
I instantly fell in love with the Catalan spirit and hospitality, which was a welcome reprieve from the more politically scolding and slightly snooty Madrilenos - and let's face it, a seaside city always seems more romantic than a landlocked one. I'm a sucker for the ocean. Catalonia borders the Mediterranean, and we cruised the city of Barcelona, driving up the Costa Brava, strolling the Rambla with its famous flower marts and street peddlers, the historic Gothic city center, the stunning shops and modern high rises of the business district, the Guell Parc, the funiculars on the hills to the east of the town (Barcelona is really a grouping of small cities in a way) ... I could have stayed for weeks. The best shopping areas in the city are on the Passeig de Gracia and the streets to its south and west, including the Boulevard Rosa arcade, Barri Gotic, and streets such as Carrer de la Portaferrissa, Carrer de la Boqueria, Carrer del Call, Carrer de la Llibreteria and Carrer de Ferran. I spent a half-hour looking for purses for my wife at Loewe, a store that is what you would get if you mated Gucci with Cartier. I couldn't even afford to use their bathroom, but it was a fun way to spend a lunch break.
But I digress. Exhausted from our trip to the city, we went downstairs to dinner and encountered an indecipherable menu with dishes named for emotions, like "Bliss," which turned out to be a plate of fruit foams and jellies infused with herbs like verbena that have holistic healing powers. Dinner consisted of lots of foam, dusts and savory gelatos; you could feel Ferran Adria's presence in restaurants all over Catalonia, much like Luke and Obi-Wan could always feel Darth Vader's vibe in the Star Wars series. Every chef in Europe is trying to incorporate Adria's iconography of techniques (dusts, gels, foams, essences, infusions) and philosophies into their work. Many have been very successful, but most merely imitate the appearances of Adria's style with none of the reality. The food still has to taste good and the flavors still need to work together. Just because you can make a smoked salmon ice cream doesn't mean it's a good idea.
The next morning we shot for hours in the Bouqeria, the oldest and best market in the city and one of the great food halls in all of Europe. We ate at La Gardunya, the famous restaurant located in the hall itself, renowned for their fresh horchata (an almond and betel nut milk concoction) that was as disgusting to drink as it sounds, but they had some delicious pan-fried calves' brains with olive oil and lemon. These huge food markets in Europe should be replicated all over our country. Essentially, they are composed of hundreds of stalls selling every food product imaginable, but every few yards there is a stall selling foods made from the goodies being sold all around them. So, in the fruit area of the market, there are a dozen little stands selling fresh fruit cups and juices; in the seafood hall, there are several small raw bars and seafood grill stands - you get the idea. The product quality is second to none and the foods are simple and devoid of the sort of artifice that many restaurants utilize to unknowingly ruin great food ingredients. Sometimes, it's OK if being a chef means being a great shopper and there should be no shame in that. The market was bustling and we got some killer footage, but nothing beat the small plate of razor clams a la plancha that I ate before we scooted up the hill to shoot at Antonion Ramon's restaurant, La Venta.
On the way we bumped into Tyra Banks, who was shooting her America's Next Top Model show on the streets of the city. This girl has more handlers than I could count and as everyone in our van got their cameras ready, and I had a handle on the door, ready to jump out and offer up a ride and good meal, the traffic surged. Our driver slipped into a distant lane, and I missed my chance. Our screams out the door. "What’s up, girl!!" - fell on deaf ears and we headed on up to the east side of town. Crushing.
But we licked our wounds at La Venta, one of the best places to view the city, with terraces that are tranquil and serene. Though a night spent on the rooftop cafe is as rocking a place as you can find in Barcelona. What's more the food is great. Ramon whipped up some fresh sea urchins in a classic gratinee and a wedge of bacalao (salt cod) that had been poached in lemon and herbs sous vide, perched on a puree of caramelized onions and potatoes with roasted tomatoes and crushed olive paste dancing around the plate. Sensational! All the flavors of the sun-drenched Costa Brava brought together on a plate. We trucked back to our hotel and shot some promos on the docks of the city. I have gotten really good at saying "I'm Andrew Zimmern and you're watching the Travel Channel," all while I'm negotiating with a sidewalk vendor over the price of a grilled frog. Also, saying "Bizarre Foods" in any language we can accurately translate ... Tomorrow we drive up to Les Cols and El Bulli, a day that I have been looking forward to my whole professional life.
Whose Life is This?
On Friday, half our crew stayed in Barcelona and I left for the Costa Brava with our producer Shannon, our fixer-driver-interpreter Anna and our photographer Mike. We drove up the coast, stopping to shoot in Olot (Girona), a medieval town a few miles inland that boasts some rare attractions, including a thousand-year-old bridge with a working battlement and keep and a 13th-century farmhouse restored into one of the most unique inns and restaurants in the world, Les Cols (www.lescols.com). Along the way, I grilled Shannon about all the celebrity awards shows she has produced. I am such a celeb geek sometimes … Here's the skinny: Besides producing many of the biggest awards shows, Shannon and Mike have also produced Wild On and Joan Rivers’ red carpet preludes on E!, so she knows from where she speaks. So, from my lips to God’s ears, Charlize and Cameron are sweethearts, Salma is a nightmare, and Brooke Burke is a hard-working and dedicated professional. Moving on ...
Now, I know that a farmhouse deep in the countryside is an unlikely location for a top-notch restaurant, but the Green Acres setting did not stop Fina Puigdevall from opening her restaurant outside Olot, in a 13th-century building that she inherited from her parents - her mom still lives on the second floor. As her reputation as a chef spread, Puigdevall wanted a place for her guests to stay the night. So she commissioned RCR Architects of Olot to preserve the ancient structure of the family house, build an extension to usher guests from farmyard to dining hall, remake the refectory, and craft a 22nd-century dining room and interior that could lie in stark contrast to the rural surroundings. A 30-meter-long steel table stretches the length of the space, with private dining alcoves set off the main thruway, but everything is clad in gold sheet metal. The walls of the oblong room have bands of gold-lacquered steel extending from floor to ceiling, each band twisting to form a loose spiral. Strips of light follow the angles where floor meets wall and wall meets ceiling. The effect is dazzling. And the food is outrageous! From the artisan cheeses made by local fromagerias to the truffle risotto with rooster crests, Les Cols is one of the most exquisite restaurants in the world.
A rooster crest really is the zigzag crown that sits on top of a rooster's head. They are braised, peeled, and then some of the crests are chopped and stirred into the risotto, while several others are napped with a chicken glace and perched atop the finished dish. If you love chicken feet, imagine all the gelatinous delight of those morsels multiplied by a factor of 100. And with only one crest worth eating out of every 10 roosters, well, you can imagine the appeal in eating a treat in Nina’s kitchen that very few diners ever get to hear about, let alone eat.
After lunch we piled into the van and headed off to Rosas, a seaside village about 90 minutes away, to meet Ferran Adria at El Bulli.
El Bulli
Friday at lunchtime we left Les Cols for Rosas and drove up the coast. The day was perfect, and approaching El Bulli, I began to get nervous in a way that I have never experienced before. Ferran Adria is going to be remembered as the greatest chef of his generation and a man that changed not only the game itself, but also the playing field and the equipment as well. For those of you who have no idea who he is, Adria is the chef at the hyperexperimental restaurant El Bulli, where a 22-course tasting menu goes for 300 Euros a pop. It is only open six months a year, and he spends the rest of the year in Barcelona in his atelier creating the next year's menu. Adria "invented" the often imitated foam-gellee (among many other techniques) school of cookery. While he denies it, he is the father of molecular gastronomy and perhaps a brief description of what I found when I walked in the door will give you an idea of this guy's skill level.
Before we could even talk to his PR people to set up the shoot we had to clear it by signing waivers. Plus, Adria required a gastronomic interpreter provided by the Spanish government to ensure that every word was precisely defined. His restaurant has two people whose sole job is to sweep the stones in the driveway; he had 44 people in his kitchen when we spent the day there, but only does one turn of 48 covers a night. He has a full-time staff of four photographers and graphic designers who do nothing but document every move in the kitchen, every day of the week!
When we walked in he was creating sugarless sponge cakes for a new item he is toying with, using a brioche batter put through a CO2 dispenser piped into small microwaveable Dixie cups and cooked for 45 seconds. He was ecstatic that he could create the lightest, airiest puffs in under a minute and he was teaming these cakes with seafoods and vegetable extracts in a dessert!
He had a team of chefs doing nothing for three hours but hand-selecting perfect fronds of a new species of seaweed that the Japanese have discovered; he was tasting hundreds of combinations of raw and blanched seaweeds, all cooked at different times to determine the optimum flavors for extracting the essence of the plant.
Adria insists that he is "just a cook" and cannot stand all the praise and attention he gets. Like many brilliant artists, he seems tortured by the fact that he lives his life under such a microscope, but acknowledges that it was his choice. He was insistent that we try his brother's tapas bar (Inopia) in Barcelona and spends every Tuesday evening there. He spent a lot of time spraying my tongue with flavor atomizers before I tasted a given edible (rosemary spritz before baby rabbit escabeche cooked sous vide), but the most telling moment came when I asked him about his commitment to local flavors. He led me to a pine tree that grew outside the kitchen, then to the pastry room where he tasted us on four pinecone elements for a dessert that he was running that night. Pine meringue, pine oil, pine syrup and pine cream, all of which were made with a distilled essence of the immature cones of this tree. It was phenomenal, woodsy and citrusy and thrilling as it moved across my tongue.
Calling this man just a cook is like calling Einstein a high school math geek.
After stuffing myself silly in the kitchens and with the pantry ways of El Bulli, we left the culinary laboratory and shot some Travel Channel promos on the veranda overlooking the small bay, from the rocky promontory on which Ferran Adria’s restaurant sits. Adria strolled out a short time later. He told me that in the evening, weather permitting, this is where guests sip apéritifs and are served small bites before being ushered into the dining room for the dinner service. The view is stunning, but more amazing to me was the relaxed and unassuming atmosphere of the three major El Bulli dining rooms. Farmhouse chairs with straw seats in one; large, curvy, whitewashed plaster banquettes piled high with soft pillows in another; a third is a smaller corner room with a simple Mediterranean aesthetic - the effect was relaxing, charming and perfectly suited to the natural setting viewed through the French doors that expose almost every seat in the building to the stunning seaside vista, the towering cypress and pine, and the unforgettable light streaming through the windows and entryways. Now, because you will actually spend four hours at your table, happily noshing your way through 20 or so of the most mind-blowing and palate-expanding courses you can possibly imagine, the dining room’s comfort level takes on even greater significance. Too many restaurants, of all types, especially in this country, seem to forget that one’s happiness at mealtime is directly proportional to one’s physical comfort both at the table and in the restaurant’s ambience. Seems like a simple rule, but think about it. How many of your last restaurant meals were curiously unthrilling, almost annoyingly tough to get through, despite the quality of the food (assuming it was good) and the relative speed with which you were forced to endure it?
Adria’s restaurant prepares and presents some of the most food-forward edibles on the planet; he has philosophical treatises and axioms that he insisted I should become familiar with before we spent the day together. He thinks, rethinks and overthinks his relationship to food and to his staff and customers to a degree that I have never seen in another human being. Every aspect of his daily food life is recorded and codified by a battery of helpers whose sole job is to be sure that every idea, each failed or successful experiment is meticulously recorded, yet Adria insists he is just a humble cook.
That insistence seemed disingenuous to me until I strolled the property with him, watched him pull weeds in the entryway, listened to him talk about the simple act of how he believes guests should be eating his food, without pretense or fuss. While his food is certainly complex, even the simplest spoon of steamed crab requires an army’s labors to put it on the plate, and the act of eating his food, which Adria insists is the purview of the guest, is a simple and relaxing one. In an age where the most popular restaurants in our country seem to cram rules, annoying tableside theatrics and marketing spin down our throats, Adria’s brilliance lies not only in his skill level as a "simple cook" but in the graceful humility with which he allows his guests to taste his talent.]]>
Ecuadortag:bizarre-blog.travel.discovery.com,2007://5.152007-03-12T21:57:11Z2008-03-05T15:19:00ZThe FLNA is massing on the border with Colombia; coca farmers are rioting in neighboring Bolivia; and I am having dreams about erupting volcanoes as we descend under a moonlit sky into the Quito airport. A night landing in Quito...Andrew Zimmern
The FLNA is massing on the border with Colombia; coca farmers are rioting in neighboring Bolivia; and I am having dreams about erupting volcanoes as we descend under a moonlit sky into the Quito airport. A night landing in Quito is about as good as it gets ... You descend and fly 20 miles straight through the Avenue of Volcanoes, which line either side of this long, thin plateau that the city is built on, high above sea level but nestled in the notches of dozens of dormant and active volcanoes. The moon seems so close you could almost reach out and touch it. Boy, is that ever a tortured cliché! My apologies.
The small town of Otavalo is home to the largest outdoor market in South America, and on the way there, we stopped and ate some cuy, the "other" Ecuadorean national dish, i.e., barbecued guinea pig. Suffice to say the tufo that everyone brags about here, that is, the sweet sticky essence that lingers on your fingers after you have polished off a couple of these little rascals, is not only a culinary curio, but also a hallmark of a good slow-roasted critter. Most roadside stalls serve them marinated for a day in garlic and orange juice before being grilled to perfection. I was more surprised at how much I loved this dish than most any other I have eaten in the last five trips. The quality of the meat, the sweetness and crispy mantle of the skin after a wood-fired few hours of cooking, and the traditional accompaniments of steamed potatoes and avocados makes for a memorable meal.
Like Morocco, the soil, sun and mountain valley microclimates make everything that is grown in Ecuador taste better than almost everywhere else I have eaten quality fruit and produce. Because of the equatorial climes, there are tropical fruits being grown just a few miles downhill from the traditional four-season varieties. On one side of Otavalo, there are orange groves and mountainous tropical temperatures; on the uphill side, snow-capped peaks, pine trees and apples. It's unbelievable …which makes the farmers market there singular to say the least, and if that isn’t enough to get you all gushy in the wee-wee, the town has a global reputation for knitwear that historically is more important than the produce grown here. Buy lots of sweaters - you won’t be sorry! We stayed the night at the Hacienda Pinsaqui, a 300-year-old plantation house where every room is heated by three or four fireplaces tended by an exuberant staff and the food and wine list is spectacular. This is a place you won’t want to miss when you visit Ecuador.
The next day we took off for Coca, a town on the Napo River from which we would make our way into Sacha Lodge to hang with the Pilchi Indians and spend four days in the Amazon jungle. Coca used to handle one flight a week from Quito, then one a day, now eight … just another example of the human impact and degradation of the Amazon jungle, which here in Ecuador is disappearing at the rate of 3 percent a year. At this pace, in another 30 years, it will be gone. Sacha Lodge is half a day’s speedboat ride up the Napo. Then you trek through the jungle and paddle across Lake Pilchicocha to get to the front door. Sacha Lodge was built entirely by hand by native builders, and every single stick and stone came in "by shoulder," down the river in long canoes. The five-star lodge experience here is unique in this part of the world. Each family, group or individual, if that is the way you are traveling, is assigned a guide for your stay and a luxury house in the jungle that is all yours for the duration. You eat all the meals in the lodge with your guide. Efrain Hernandez was mine, and I spent all day with him and Donald, our native guide.
Effy knows everything there is to know about everything, in a big picture way, and Donald knows the rest. For example, we hear a series of calls and clicks in the jungle. Effy says they are howler monkeys, toucans, aguti (a giant rodent) and pygmy marmosets. He is right, but Donald is the one who can find them and bring us to them without them being spooked. He can predict weather, hunt and fish in a way that I have never seen before, cook for two or 200, and though he is only about 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, he basically paddles, portages, and hauls all the gear for seven of us 24 hours a day. He is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met, and one of the great joys of my life was spending four days in the jungle with him.]]>
Moroccotag:bizarre-blog.travel.discovery.com,2007://5.172007-03-05T21:28:04Z2008-03-05T15:19:00ZMoroccan Mo and More Mo Flying in over Marrakech for the first time, you can't help but be impressed with the riveting contrasts of the North African landscape ... rugged mountains, stunning coast line, hard rocky deserts, verdant oasis and...Andrew Zimmern
Last-minute changes ... Oy vey!
For months we had been planning on a day or so of shooting in the soft sand dunes of Erfud, with a tribe of bedouins who would be doing a camel cookout with us. We would spend the day and night in this incredibly unique and stunning locale with nomadic tribespeople who live the same way their ancestors have for thousands of years. No such luck.
While we were in Madrid, a major sandstorm wiped out the oasis and put 4 feet of sand all through the neighboring village, so now there is no Erfud for us to see. But we have a theme for our next few days: we need to find some camel to chow down on!
Now, camels are the most efficient animals for domesticating in the desert, so getting some folks to part with one for a cookout is tricky. Mo says he can make it happen, and at this point we trust him, despite our best instincts. Shannon re-works our shooting dates at the 11th hour, and we set off across the Atlas mountains to Ourzazate, a hard-rock desert town that Mo not only swears is a great place to shoot some tagine and a traditional Berber meal in a local inn, but also persuades us that the local casbah (fort) is going to be a great location for some beauty shots.
We leave behind the olive groves and hustle and bustle of Marrakech and head out for our eight-hour schlep across Morocco. As we leave the city, we pass the Palerais, the Beverly Hills of Marrakech. Everyone from Sean Connery to Adnan Kashoggi have residences here. The homes are INCREDIBLE, and the idea of sitting poolside for a few weeks, being fed fresh oranges and pigeon pie is a powerfully attractive intoxicant. But duty calls. Mo is celebrity crazed and won't shut up about a handful of late '70s French film stars he knows. Apparently, he once drove Alain Delon around the town and thinks they are best friends. He also once escorted David Hasselhoff through Marrakech and keeps pictures of both of them in his briefcase. Creepy!
Now we have our fate in the hands of the two Mo's ... a frightening thought.
Do you know what a mahari is? It's an old male camel that has loads of desert experience. Bedouins will tell you that you always keep a mahari tied up inside your tent so that if a sandstorm comes and wipes out everything, and all your camels run off in the night and everyone dies, you can lash yourself to your mahari and it will save your life, since invariably he will head directly to water/food and a female camel, not necessarily in that order. Mo is our mahari, and the idea that I have lashed myself to him is petrifying. I don't trust him, and my internal radar is sounding an alert. Vigilance!
The ride to Ourzazate is awesome. Oases at 3,000 feet that have some of the most incredible orchards on the planet. The mountains reflect the sun into these 100-mile-long
notches, where snow runoff guarantees plenty of water. The citrus, apricots, melons, tomatoes and other vegetables are some of the best I have ever tasted, and every few miles there is a stand with a few farmers selling their goods. We bump into a weekly market in a little mountain town called Zerten and stop to check out the fruit vendors, the raw goats swinging from the open-air stalls, and the tagines. Mo assures us that his buddies in Ourzazate have some camel for us to check out when we get there. All the goats in the market are skinned except for the heads and feet, so prospective customers can see what type of animal it is. That way you know you're not buying someone’s doggie when you want some lamb, goat etc. All the testicles are left attached to the carcass, because the Moroccans believe the boys taste better than the girls and the vendors want to assure the shoppers that they are buying little fellas, not little ladies. Apparently, the last customer of the day gets his portions lopped off the haunches and they throw in the balls for free. Very fair system, I think.
So back into the van and off we go, stopping in medieval little mountain towns along the way. Farmers working their donkeys do the roads, women and children wash laundry in the rivers made swift with the snowmelt, and the jacaranda trees are in full bloom for a hundred miles. Waterfalls cascade from the peaks, and Berber villages are camouflaged into the sides of the mountains - a stunning scenery, if ever there was one.
We pull into Ourzazate, sliding past the largest film soundstage outside Hollywood. It's surreal. Every 'Sand and Sandals' epic ever shot has been filmed here, from Liz Taylor's 'Cleopatra' to 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' to 'Gladiator.' We pull into the town proper, check into our hotel and learn two things:
1) The off-road Trans-Morocco road race is in Ourzazate for the night, and the town is packed with race teams. Imagine the Indy 500 going from town to town, and you get the idea. Other than the Paris-Dakar rally, this is the second-biggest race of the year and it shows. The stuff is being broadcast live all over the globe (except in the U.S.A.), and seeing all the rally cars and their teams up close is really, really cool.
2) Mo's buddies have no camel, but we are going to make lemonade with our lemons and shoot there anyway. The search for camel meat continues, and Mo insists that he can find someone who will be harvesting one from a herd. We may have to pay big bucks, but we can eat one for sure. His bravado and self-confidence is scaring me, but all the pre-production research shows that camel is available, so who knows. I would feel better if I had a more convincing mahari to rely on. Being around Mo, I feel less and less like a savvy Bedouin and more and more like the goat at Zerten, waiting for his balls to be cut off.]]>
Philippinestag:bizarre-blog.travel.discovery.com,2007://5.132007-02-26T22:50:39Z2008-03-05T15:19:00ZI love Southeast Asia. Returning there for our shoot in the Philippines makes me feel like a raindrop entering the river. So naturally I am out of bed earlier than usual today. Nineteen hours (layovers!) later, I am driving into...Andrew Zimmern
I love Southeast Asia. Returning there for our shoot in the Philippines makes me feel like a raindrop entering the river. So naturally I am out of bed earlier than usual today. Nineteen hours (layovers!) later, I am driving into Metro Manila after landing at Aquino Airport and I get my first look at the local paper. Welcome back big fella … Let’s see what’s news today. Well, it’s the 61st anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb, anyone caught with drugs will be punished by death, it’s going to be a scorcher out there today, it’s humid and, oh yeah, I can smell the city before I see it. Turn the page … Mount Mayon is erupting, there are earthquakes in Fiji, Mr. Janjalani, the Abu Sayyaf’s head troublemaker is being hunted here in Mindanao, and I have to eat my first balut when I wake up in the morning. So off I go to Pateros, just outside Manila, for my Balut fest. If you haven’t eaten fertilized duck embryos, then you haven’t lived. They taste like teeny iron-y liver balls with a duck burp on the back end. I need to get to the countryside.
I mean, do you really want to hear anything else about the Manila where there is more sadness, poverty, pollution and traffic than almost any other place in the world that I have ever visited? Or do you want to hear about the Manila where the privileged elites live behind walled compounds with private mercenaries guarding them and spend their days working in high-rise office towers and their afternoons shopping at Prada? Amazing world we live in. I cannot wait to get to Palawan this weekend, an island paradise where rich and poor all share the same realities of daily life. Manila has beaten the pants out of my high spirits. But I digress.
Some things that kept me busy while I sweated out the urban experience:
Jeepneys: Jeepneys are the most popular form of transportation in the Philippines. You hop on, pay the driver based on the distance you will travel, and hop off. Every Jeepney driver tricks out his ride in their own way. My cameraman, Mike, suggested a new reality show that we could do here, Un-Pimp My Ride...The Jeepney style and name are a holdover from the American occupation and the surfeit of Army jeeps that we left behind. Funny, but the Spanish were here for 500 years and you can't find a trace of their footprint anywhere except for a few oddball recipe holdovers and the crumbling walls of Intramuros. The Americans have been here for 60 years, and there are more KFCs per capita than there are back home. Go figure.
Mayors: Mayors are a dime a dozen. There are more office-holding politicians in this country than there are potable water sources, and every town and village we go to insists that the Dept. of Tourism honchos bring us by to get the key to the city and kiss some babies. That is how we start each day.
Worms and Frogs: Crawly stuff are traditional foods here, and a stable source of protein. I ate plenty at the Balaw Balaw restaurant, an artist's gallery and famous eatery in Rizal province. The worms are the size of golf balls. The frogs in the Philippines are afraid of the worms.
Staff Lunch: Staff lunch is shared each day by the whole crew. Often we have a big group with us. Travel and Living Channel is what they call the Travel Channel here, and my show is apparently a big hit. Each day we have more and more people with us, it seems. The Dept. of Tourism keeps telling them where we are and they keep showing up, which is fun because we have gotten our best tips on food from the crew.
Lounge Acts: The lounge act at the Manila Diamond Hotel is called Pepi and MultiVitamin. Imagine Siegfried and Roy's illegitimate step-kids. Filipino lounge acts are so bad, they are great.
Angeles: Angeles is a town that should be avoided at all costs. It used to be the red light district that serviced the American bases here. Now it is rundown and has lost its biggest client, since the United States pulled out. Imagine Sodom and Gomorrah, but one so tawdry and used up that it seems more reminiscent of one of the rings in Dante’s Inferno than a place you want to drink and flirt with hookers. It is evil incarnate.
Finally, from the filth, traffic jams and decaying urban sprawl of Manila, we are in the remote island province, Palawan. We fly right into the capital of the province, Puerto Princessa. It feels like the Philippines are supposed to feel … and look and sound and taste. In fact, the vibe here is straight out of Somerset Maugham’s South Pacific short stories … ever read "Rain"? After years of searching for the sensation that civilization has really ended, I think I found it. The best part is that modern life and some of the comforts we associate with it are in Puerto (like running water), but you can drive 10 minutes and be in the middle wilderness, real tropical wilderness.
It has rained here for a week straight, the effect of Siaopao, the worst typhoon to come through these parts in 50 years. Palawan got the side swipe. China took a direct hit, so we feel lucky. It is still raining when we land, pouring, in a way that the rain only falls in the equatorial climes of Southeast Asia during the rainy season. We are welcomed into this teeny town by a delegation from the local tourism ministry and driven to our hotel. There we wash up, get back in the car and head up the coast to the Badjao Seafront Restaurant.
I would rather eat a meal in a restaurant at the end of the road than at any other type of eatery I can think of. Whether it’s a Maine lobster shack, like Five Islands Lobster Company, a beachfront oyster bar in Brittany, a Montauk Point fish house, or a seafood restaurant like the BSR, I am in heaven. The BSR is a mahogany-and-teak raft floating a quarter mile out in the South China Sea, on the edge of a mangrove forest, dripping with wild orchids. The owner, Mrs. Mendoza, knows she has the best joint in town, but works doubly hard keeping it that way. We ate sautéed chicken with lemongrass and banana flower, chili crabs, grilled prawns, roasted tangigue (a mackerel local to the seas here), grilled eggplant in coconut milk with onions and lime, grilled tuna, ceviche, steamed clams and several seaweed salads. We sucked down banana and mango purées made from fruit that was hanging from trees on the property. We grabbed dessert at a local jungle market that caters to the banana pickers and farmers in the town. The ripest fingerling bananas are rolled in coarse locally made brown sugar and wok-fried for about 45 seconds, taken out, rolled again and dunked back in the oil for 30 seconds more. The result is bananas Foster without the snooty waiter and tableside flambé gimmickry.
You gotta’ love the Philippines.]]>
That insistence seemed disingenuous to me until I strolled the property with him, watched him pull weeds in the entryway, listened to him talk about the simple act of how he believes guests should be eating his food, without pretense or fuss. While his food is certainly complex, even the simplest spoon of steamed crab requires an army’s labors to put it on the plate, and the act of eating his food, which Adria insists is the purview of the guest, is a simple and relaxing one. In an age where the most popular restaurants in our country seem to cram rules, annoying tableside theatrics and marketing spin down our throats, Adria’s brilliance lies not only in his skill level as a "simple cook" but in the graceful humility with which he allows his guests to taste his talent.]]>
On one side of Otavalo, there are orange groves and mountainous tropical temperatures; on the uphill side, snow-capped peaks, pine trees and apples. It's unbelievable …which makes the farmers market there singular to say the least, and if that isn’t enough to get you all gushy in the wee-wee, the town has a global reputation for knitwear that historically is more important than the produce grown here. Buy lots of sweaters - you won’t be sorry! We stayed the night at the Hacienda Pinsaqui, a 300-year-old plantation house where every room is heated by three or four fireplaces tended by an exuberant staff and the food and wine list is spectacular. This is a place you won’t want to miss when you visit Ecuador.
The next day we took off for Coca, a town on the Napo River from which we would make our way into Sacha Lodge to hang with the Pilchi Indians and spend four days in the Amazon jungle. Coca used to handle one flight a week from Quito, then one a day, now eight … just another example of the human impact and degradation of the Amazon jungle, which here in Ecuador is disappearing at the rate of 3 percent a year. At this pace, in another 30 years, it will be gone. Sacha Lodge is half a day’s speedboat ride up the Napo. Then you trek through the jungle and paddle across Lake Pilchicocha to get to the front door. Sacha Lodge was built entirely by hand by native builders, and every single stick and stone came in "by shoulder," down the river in long canoes. The five-star lodge experience here is unique in this part of the world. Each family, group or individual, if that is the way you are traveling, is assigned a guide for your stay and a luxury house in the jungle that is all yours for the duration. You eat all the meals in the lodge with your guide. Efrain Hernandez was mine, and I spent all day with him and Donald, our native guide.
Effy knows everything there is to know about everything, in a big picture way, and Donald knows the rest. For example, we hear a series of calls and clicks in the jungle. Effy says they are howler monkeys, toucans, aguti (a giant rodent) and pygmy marmosets. He is right, but Donald is the one who can find them and bring us to them without them being spooked. He can predict weather, hunt and fish in a way that I have never seen before, cook for two or 200, and though he is only about 5 feet tall and 100 pounds, he basically paddles, portages, and hauls all the gear for seven of us 24 hours a day. He is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met, and one of the great joys of my life was spending four days in the jungle with him.]]>