Tripped

The Salmon Mousse

I really thought this guy was going to visit me the other night, and I've spent the last two days trying to avoid him since. In my case, it wasn't the salmon mousse, but the moules mariniere on Monday in Port en Bessin. Fortunately for the rest of our party I was the only one to consume them at this particular restaurant. It only takes one mal moule, but this one had a vicious streak. This also meant my part of the Normandy tour ended prematurely: no Omaha Beach, no cemetery, no Bayeux Tapestry. Ah, well, there will be other chances in the future, I'm sure.

New Cuisine = Great Lunch

We've been reading all about the Cape Malay cuisine that's unique to Cape Town and S.A., and have gotten hints of it in various meals during our visit here, but today's lunch was our first taste of the authentic stuff. Outstanding - a combination of Javanese and Indian methods and local spicing that's completely its own. We both had curry that was not hot up front like some Indian types, but instead left a bit of heat on the back of your palate after you swallowed. Some of the sides look and sound just as familiar as the curries - like "rooti" bread and "samoosas" - but with unique local twists, not only on the spelling but on the flavors. And then there were all new unfamiliars like these:

 

Dhaltjies, known on the menu as "chilli bites" - deep-fried chickpea batter mixed with potato, coriander, and spinach.

The curry was also accompanied by a relish made of carrots, onions, and who knows what else. Up front it tasted a bit like American pickle relish - you know, the kind of stuff you put on your hot dog - but with more vinegary tang and then, like the curry a bit of heat on the back end that was somehow different than the curry heat. Worked wonderfully when you glopped a bit on the chicken and potatoes in the curry.

 

About the only thing we were missing was beer - the coloured population here (a distinct category from the African black ethnic groups), originating as it did in the old Dutch East India territories of Malaysia, is primarily Muslim. So no booze for you at Zorina Cafe!

Semillon!

It's the signature grape of the Hunter Valley, but not one we've had a lot of experience with prior to our visit here. The big revelation for us as semillon novices was how well it ages over a 20+ year life in the bottle, as we learned thanks to the flight tastings we did at a couple of cellar doors, including Tyrell's Wines and Audrey Wilkinson. Dry and citrusy and with almost no color in its early years, often with some acidity, and yet still not tasting like the similar-in-appearance sauvignon blancs we're more familiar with. Remaining dry as it ages, but much softer and more well-rounded, with a beautiful gold color that looks like a big, bland, buttery chardonnay - but fortunately doesn't taste like it, with much more subtle and complex flavorings.

Yes, That's a Deer Farm

Something you'll see few other places in the world: domesticated deer, in this case red deer originally imported from Europe for hunting (and like those stoats, now an incredible nuisance in the wild here). They're everywhere, especially on the South Island - not quite as widespread as sheep or cattle, but constantly visible as you drive the rural regions. Thus, venison is on many a restaurant menu. Amazingly, the industry has only existed since the 70s, and they claim it's the first successful domestication of a previously wild animal in 5000 years.

Try the Wine, Cont.

We've long been a fan of New Zealand wine, especially the Sauvignon Blanc - En Zed whites are mostly all we get in the States - but we've added some new favorites since we've arrived here, with our Marlborough trip helping to cement them. Besides the "Savvy," as the Kiwis call it, in the past we've also enjoyed drinking the unoaked Chardonnays that many wineries here produce (Kim Crawford is a major producer exporting to the U.S. who does one, if you're interested in seeing what we mean), since neither of us can stand the heavy oaking of California Chards. But our newest revelation is oaked Savvy, something that we haven't seen much at all in the States but which we tasted and enjoyed several times in Marlborough. A lot of the wineries that produce them don't export to the U.S., or at least not in any quantity, unfortunately, but one favorite you might look for is from Seresin Estate, whose logo you can see in the picture above.

Another revelation: NZ Rieslings. Neither of us had much of a Riesling palate before coming here - it's not produced that much in California, and we simply haven't tasted enough from Alsace or Germany to appreciate the grape - but we've become big fans of the dry versions produced in this country since we started tasting more. Tonight at dinner, for example, we had one from Te Whare Ra that we've enjoyed before and which was once again excellent.

Finally, we can say we've actually drunk and enjoyed Pinot Noir. I've had a few good Pinots from the States, but despite the incredible marketing effort of Paul Giamatti in Sideways, when sampling the best from Oregon and California there have been many more misses than hits, and Eileen's opinion of the U.S. Pinots is even lower than mine. Not true here. Maybe it's the climate, maybe it's that they're doing it in more of the French Burgundy style, but the Pinot Noirs here definitely have appealed to us more.

"Try the Wine"

We're exploring our third new New World wine region, and what's most striking at this point is what isn't striking about them - they're a hell of a lot more alike than they are different. There was that weirdness of showing up five minutes too early for our appointment at a vineyard in Chile and being kept outside the gates of one vineyard by a guard with a semi-automatic weapon on his hip, but otherwise the similarities overwhelm the differences. There are always mountains nearby (although not always snow-capped). There are always deep blue skies (it hasn't rained on us yet in any of them). The barrels, the stainless steel fermentation tanks, and the bottles are all from the same modern production templates - (the only difference here in En Zed is that there are few if any corks at all -  screw tops cover 90-95% of the production - and the steel tanks are all outdoors, not under a roof.) We find ourselves commenting more on how Marlborough is like Sonoma, or Mendoza is like Napa, than about anything unusual about the Southern Hemisphere vineyards vs. those in California.

New Zealand is more prepared than Chile or Argentina to accept drop-ins, even busloads of them, but all three still appear to spend the same amount of money on the front-of-the-house setup as any California winery. Maybe it's the Sideways influence. The well-versed saleswoman at the tasting room for the boutique estate "Bouldevines," across the street from our hotel, implied as much, when she mentioned the movie and how much she loathed it when she first saw it - but how she came to appreciate it after repeat viewings. I think her appreciation was more for the marketing lessons she drew from it than anything else, because you could drop the "Bouldevines" room she was managing onto the grounds any Santa Barbara pinot producer, and Paul Giamatti would look perfectly at home.

There are small differences, of course: in South America we were seeing the vineyards in late summer, and the crush was just beginning by the time we hit Mendoza. Here we're already well into fall, and the harvest is done. The tourist volume has the same "cree-sus" feel, however: we're not the only folks staying out our small hotel, but it's not more than a quarter occupied, and we once again had a dining room to ourselves for dinner last night. Being here midweek when most people are at work or in school also makes a difference at this time of year.

Another small difference: the staff at two of the three places we stopped yesterday - Bouldevines and Alan Scott - were incredibly knowledgeable. Thanks to the general lack of customers, they were also willing to engage us in extended conversation, so we learned a lot more about the region and the wines than we might have at a different time of year. One revelation: oaked sauvignon blanc (or as they say here, "savvy") - something we never see in the States, either from En Zed or anywhere else. Also, we've finally tasted some pinot noirs we like - a varietal from here that we rarely see in the U.S., and one that we've never been big fans of at home, when it comes to California and Oregon producers, at least. Even the Central Otago pinots we've tasted here didn't appeal, but the Marlboroughs we've had in the last couple of days have been much different - more subtle, more balanced.

Marc's Last Meal, the Addendum

Eileen's two cents are now attached.

Marc's Last Meal

... in Buenos Aires, anyway. Today at Marc's suggestion, before he got on his plane tonight to head back home to North Carolina, we went for lunch at La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar,

the restaurant in San Telmo of chef Alejandro Digilio, who is part of the molecular gastronomy movement, having trained under one of its pioneers, Ferran Adrià at his restaurant El Bulli in Catalonia, Spain. Eleven course tasting menu for lunch, prix fixe, with an accompanying set of wines suggested by the restaurant staff. The place is very hot on the food blogs and among critics, but amazingly, they've only recently opened for lunch on weekdays, and we turned out to be the only customers there when we showed up for our 2 p.m. reservation. Here's the menu:

Marc and I both did a terrible job of remembering to take pictures of every course before we dove in, but here's a sampling. This is all that remained of our aperitivos, but trust us, it was good: a delicious small foie gras mousse on a silver spoon; salmon sashimi on a stick; a capsule of crispy breading with a balsamic sauce inside; and another breaded treat the filling of which we now can't identify in trying to remember it. This was accompanied by a granita of grapefruit juice:

 

Up next, a delicious little salad that included beets, tiny baby cauliflower and broccoli heads, portobello mushroom slices, accompanied by an herb puree, a soy-based sauce, and microgreens:

 

Next up was Eileen's favorite: a poached egg yolk inside a crisp pastry that was garnished on top with grated truffle, with a fresh cream cheese to accompany:

 

From there we moved to the mar y montaña - surf and turf - of scallops and lamb tongue. The photo-taking on this was also a big piece of fail on my part. That's a plum puree on the side:

 

I did manage to get a picture of the next course, which is labelled "white" salmon on the menu but which we identified as halibut or something similar: firm, mild flesh that had a light pan seared crust and black tea gelatin noodles underneath. Very, very interesting flavor combinations - the greens had a distinctive flavor, but we weren't able to extract a decent translation in English of what they were from the waiter. The black tea was really what it was all about:

 

Next up: shredded braised rabbit with a green apple foam, a dusting of mild paprika, and an accompanying little bar of some sort of green apple gelatin thing (that's about as exact as I can get):

 

There was then a pause in the meat courses for "lamb without lamb" - lamb flavors but no actual lamb wrapped inside a potato crisp:

 

I didn't even manage to capture the entrails on our plates of the steak that followed - ojo de bife - but that's OK because it was probably the weakest course on the menu. It had a thin-sliced turnip wrapped around a ratatouille cake as a side. We then moved onto the dessert courses, starting with a thin slice of warm spiced peach, bookended by some very light cookie wedges - almond flavored, if I recall:

 

The penultimate was a classic molecular dessert prepared with liquid nitrogen: a trio of ice creams with chocolate ice on top and crumbly chocolate bits on the bottom that reminded you of nothing so much as the chocolate bits inside a Carvel ice cream cake:

 

The finale was little chocolate truffles, lightly salted on top. Another of our photo fails. The menu appears to have just turned over for the fall, so no one else has blogged this yet, but I'm sure by next week I'll be able to point you to photos of the dishes that we missed while we were gorging. Overall, an excellent meal. We sampled five wines along the way: Doña Paula sauvignon blanc, a malbec rosé, a Patagonian pinot noir, a five-grape red blend from Mendoza, and what might have been our favorite, a Las perdices Mendoza ice wine to accompany the desserts.

 

As you can see from the shot of the bottle, it's an open kitchen. Here are our desserts being prepared:

 Eileen's addendum to Marc's last meal:  Chip mainly described, so I'll opine.  Four of these dishes were fantastic - 2 of the 'aperitivos' (the foie gras mousse and the balsamic 'pillow'); the egg dish (amazing), and the scallop/lamb tongue dish.  Of the rest, 5 were very good - the three desserts, the salad, and the halibut with tea gelatin noodles.  The beef was the only dish that seemed mediocre to me. 

Mmmm ... Empanadas

What could be better than pastry stuffed with meat? Or pastry stuffed with meat and cheese?

You can tell which kind they are by the way they pinch the edges: the beef have the rolled edge, the chicken have the little curlicue wings. At least at our pizza place. Great thing about B.A. - the pizza places all do empanadas.

But so does every restaurant. The parillas all have them as a starter item on the menu. Watching the locals here, a typical dinner for some of them can start with beef empanadas, move on to a platter of grilled sausage and offal as an appetizer (if you're feeling extravagant, you go for the sweetbreads alone), and then a big steak. With nothing else on the plate. Papas fritas are extra if you want to order them. Top it all off with helado - the Argentines are wild about their ice cream.

And yet they don't even crack the top 25 for heart disease deaths per thousand in the World Health Organization rankings. Go figure.

Those Global Distribution Gaps

It's the soap that's the odd one: we found Neutrogena, unscented formula, available in Chile, in Peru, in Ecuador. In Argentina, it's nowhere to be seen - even while the original formula bars and a range of other Neutrogena products fill the shelves in the Farmacity. Now that we're on our fourth country and our third extended stay, what we've learned about global distribution of consumer goods is that plenty of the major brands we're all familiar with back in the States have penetrated these markets. But as expats everywhere seeking the comforts of home have long documented, it's impossible to predict which ones make it across which border. I

Take that Neutrogena soap in Latin America: it appears to have an oddly antagonistic relationship with Neutrogena shampoo. The latter was impossible to find anywhere for ten weeks, from the moment our initial flight landed in Lima, through Peru and Ecuador and Chile, until we arrived here. Now it's in every Farmacity in Buenos Aires even while the unscented bars have disappeared. Multiple other American shampoo brands, however, have been ubiquitous across the continent, especially Head & Shoulders in its many different formulations.

Our old standby Tom's of Maine toothpaste has been a no-show on shelves throughout, so if they're getting a marketing boost or improved retail channel access via their acquisition by Colgate-Palmolive, it's not internationally. And there's been plenty of Colgate around everywhere we've gone - that and Aquafresh seem to be the most popular American toothpaste brands, in their full range of flavors and types.

Atra razor blades, still widely available as replacement cartridges to the installed base of handle owners in the States? Forget it - in Argentina, they've already been phased out. If you're a Gillette customer you're either a Sensor Excel, Mach 3, or Fusion user.

Peanut butter had been everywhere, until Argentina.

The pervasiveness of Coke and McDonald's are well documented and railed against, although no one in any of the countries we've visited appears to be railing - they're enormously popular. But Oreos have been just as pervasive.

Those are off the top of my head, I'm sure Eileen will now remind me of some more and I'll append them here.