Wu Wei

5 top restaurants

I was already feeling hungry before I saw Ms Melancholy's post called Now I am feeling hungry, in which she lists her favourite restaurants.  But it's too late to do anything about it.  I shall just have to get up early for breakfast in the hotel, which would never figure in my list, no matter how much we like the rest of the hotel.

Update: I see that actually I was supposed to write about 5 restaurants at my location. Well, my excuse is I was tired and hungry. And I travel a lot, so my location is very variable. I haven't actually got a favourite place in Oxford, where I live, yet. Haven't been there too often.

Here they are:

Antonella's in Pristina, Kosovo, otherwise known as il Passatore 
I have no idea what the address is, as I have only been by taxi, but a friend of mine is lucky enough to have it as his nearest restaurant, so I am very envious.  He says he feels like he is at home, with a personal chef.  Antonella, the owner, is a strange but friendly Italian lady, who does rather smart Italian home cooking. Or rather she supervises it.  It is a bit like going to dinner at your grandma's, (at least if she was Italian) as she offers you all sorts of goodies according to what she has bought, and fusses round you making sure it is all OK.  My Bosnian friend said that she laid on a Christmas dinner for everyone not doing a family thing, and refused to charge.

Literatu Svetaine, Vilnius
This is unfortunately still closed as far as I know, due to some kitchen dispute, but is due to open again soon.  Not only does it have the best location, just by the Cathedral so that le tout Vilnius passes you when you sit outside at lunchtime, (creating for visitors the idea that I knew everyone in Vilnius), but it has delicious (even if a bit expensive) Scandinavian food.  Plus the internal decor has not changed much since it was the Writers' Salon, in communist times, giving you an exclusive feeling of being with the elite. 

Any of the old Balti restaurants, in Stoney Lane, Birmingham
When I first moved to Birmingham in 1977, these restaurants were just cheap places for students and the locals to eat.  Then Balti became fashionable and prices rose, and imitations proliferated, as I have written about elsewhere on the blog but I refuse to give that restaurant a free plug.  These old restaurants are a bit smarter now, and the prices have risen, but the food is still as good.

Diwana Bhel Poori House, Drummond St, London
This restaurant dates back to my student days, when there were always queues outside to have several sorts of South Indian pancakes made with rice flour and other veggie delicacies.  I occasionally went back on trips to London, and nothing had changed; still queues to get in, still delicious cheap food.  The last time I went, I took my children, who were not yet so keen on Indian food (must have been years ago) and I thought they might like this better.  I was surprised I could even find it, since I had long forgotten its name, just remembering its location by Euston Station. I googled and it's still there.

Dveri, Sarajevo
This is our current favourite, and one day we even ate there twice.  I reviewed it here.  On Friday night, it was raining heavily, so we all packed into the tiny space indoors and borrowed an umbrella to get home.  We haven't found many other restaurants where the food is interesting and agrees with our stomachs.  Which is a shame.

Finally, (I know this is 6, but I can't remember its name) I haven't included any Greek restaurants because I have never had a bad meal in one.  There are too many I have enjoyed to list my favourites, but they must be by the sea and have fresh fish.  Perhaps the one I remember best was the one on Kalymnos overlooking the channel between it and the small island across the water.  You had to climb half way down the cliff to get to it but the view was magnificent.  Each night we saw the lights coming on round the bay and the small boats coming home, and it was just wonderful. The food was good too.

Since Ms M did not tag anyone, just left it up to anyone to respond, I'll do the same.  But you are supposed to add your blog to the end of this list.

Nicole (Sydney, Australia)
velverse (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
LB (San Giovanni in Marignano, Italy)
Selba (Jakarta, Indonesia)
Olivia (London, England)
ML (Utah, USA)
Lotus (Toronto, Canada)
tanabata (Saitama, Japan)
Andi (Dallas [ish], Texas, United States)
Todd (Louisville, Kentucky, United States)
miss kendra (los angeles, california, u.s.a)
Jiggs Casey (Berkeley, CA, USA! USA! USA!)
Tits McGee (New England, USA)
Kat (Ontario, Canada)
badgerdaddy (Ludlow, Shropshire, England)
Dandelion (England, Great Britain)
Ms Melancholy (Yorkshire, UK)
Wu Wei (currently in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes in Oxford, UK)

 

Technorati tags: Food, restaurants, meme

Food rant

I stand accused here of depriving my children of a normal British childhood, or at least of its food. But as far as I remember their father often cooked them fish fingers when I was away.

However it seems Bee has found out the hard way why I refused to buy fish fingers in Lithuania. She cooked them herself. Welcome to her anti-British food blog.

Dandelions for lunch - no mistake

Ever been irritated by the "English" translations on a menu abroad?  My sister volunteered to make proper English translations for a friend's restaurant.  So when she said "dandelions for lunch" we knew she meant it, and since the menu changes weekly, we knew that was special this week. 

So off we went for a plate of Slovenian dandelions or Regrat s krompirjem, jajcem in peceno slanino.  A bit like the French piss-en-lit au lard.  You can read about that here.  We got an enormous plate of dandelions, strips of bacon, slices of egg and potatoes with a little oil and vinegar.  When I say enormous, the picture shows the amount after I had eaten half - it only then occurred to me to take a photo (on mobile phone). My sister complained there should be more potatoes.

As the years in Athens made me a big fan of healthy green leaves (you can see my post about the varieties of Greek horta here, though I was never sure about having to boil the leaves), so I really enjoyed this.  In Kosovo, I got used to having spinach leaves as fresh salad. Obviously you have to munch hard and eat a large quantity, but all of that is good for you.  

The restaurant itself, "Klub Preserne Zdravlice",  is tucked away on Zupanciceva 9 and is only open for lunch, but was packed with office types.  The couple who run it prefer a normal family life, and so the restaurant is closed in the evening and at the weekend.  There is a terrace outside, (not in use yet this year), and the indoor seating has the feel of a pub.  You can get a 3-course set lunch (soup meat and salad) for  around 6 Euros, with a different set meal every day, and there is also a full menu to choose from.

 

Technorati tags: dandelion, piss en lit, horta, restaurant review

Lake Post No 1 - Trakai, Lithuania

I realised in my haste to rush round Slovenia I had not covered everything I meant to say about my Lithuanian trip.  So here is my trip to the lake near Vilnius.  Obligatory for all foreign visitors, with a castle on a island in the lake, it makes a perfect Sunday outing, even in January.

Compared with Slovenia, Lithuania is incredibly flat. No mountains surrounding the lake. Trakai is too big to walk round, and anyway there are no paths.  People drive through the small town and round the lake to find a convenient spot to picnic and swim in summer.  In winter, however, people huddle in cafes after a bracing walk.  As you can see, it was a cloudy windy day with the sun coming out for brief periods, making the light in these photos quite  different.  There was also no snow, unusual for this time in Lithuania.

You can find the history and some better photos of the castle here.  Suffice it to say that the stone castle dates from the 15th century and Trakai was once the capital of Lithuania.  Another interesting feature of the region is that the town was built and preserved by people of different nationalities. Communities of Karaims, Tatars, Lithuanians, Russians, Jews and Poles lived here side by side. Karaims (or Karaites) are a small Turkic-speaking religious and ethnic group resettled there by Grand Duke Vytautas in 1397 and 1398 from Crimea, after one of his successful military campaigns against the Golden Horde. Both Christian and Karaim communities were granted separate self-government in accordance with the Magdeburg Rights.

The castle is reached by a wooden bridge which you can just see in the first photo.  In summer there are plays and ballets in the theatre in the castle but in the winter, nothing.  However, this yacht was moored right in front of the castle and later it did go for a sail.

Trakai town does not really know how to cater for visitors.  There are a few cafes and one restaurant, which serves mainly traditional Lithuanian food.  The famous kibinas, a sort of meat pasty, has a special shop in Trakai.  The locals are very keen on preserving everything as it is, so development is not permitted.  That makes it rather dull in winter, though people go mainly for healthy sporty pursuits rather than entertainment. 

So here are our traditional bulviniu blynai (potato pancakes with sour cream) which we all had for lunch.  You can read my views on Lithuanian food here, but I really like these crispy potato things, and would make them at home if I could be bothered to grate potatoes.

After that, we went to a new cafe called Sokoladas which has recently opened branches in Trakai and Vilnius.  Clearly inspired by the book and the film it has a wonderful atmosphere on a cold day and the coffee and chocolate were excellent.

 

Technorati tags: Lithuania Trakai lake

A Taste of Spice

Lotus reads has reviewed an Indian film all about spices (The Mistress of Spices), but she says it is not a recommended film.

Here's a better one about spices, Greek this time. Called Politiki Kouzina or A Touch of Spice in English, it is about a Greek family living in Constantinople (as the Greeks still call Istanbul), where the Grandfather keeps a spice shop. The shop serves Greeks and Turks alike. The grandson becomes a good cook even when he is only 10, and much of the film revolves around family cooking and which spices to use. The boy has a friend who is a Turkish girl. But the family is forced to leave Istanbul for Athens in the late 50s, leaving the grandfather behind.

Eventually the grown son returns to Istanbul and meets the grown Turkish girl who now has a husband and a daughter. I won't spoil the end for you. It's a sad story about exile but vivid about life and food in Constantinople. It's was very popular in Greece while we were there.

There's a DVD. It has English subtitles when they spoke Greek but later in the film the Turkish dialogue is rendered in English without subtitles.

No Balti in Baltic States- Sue's Indian Raja

Sue's has long been a fixture of Vilnius, if you can call something a fixture that has had several different locations and vanished altogether at times.  Better to say that it has long been the only Indian restaurant. When we arrived in 1998, there was another one, almost on our doorstep, but it soon closed, much to our disappointment.

In its earliest location in Jogailos, Sue's had premises in a semi-basement, no special decor that I remember, (not even red flock wallpaper) and a largish menu.  The basement was then expanded with a corner to provide Thai food. The Indian food was not bad, but considered too spicy and too expensive by the Lithuanians, so it was not popular except with expats.  I remember it chiefly for my ritual meetings on Wednesdays with my friend Charlie.  He worked like me advising government organisations, but he was based in Latvia.  On Wednesdays he came to Vilnius for another bit of advising. 

So we would meet on Wednesdays in Sue's for our regular consolation about our thankless tasks, or so it seemed in those days.  (Now we can see that people were listening when it suited them, and some things have been done, though everything takes longer than you think.)  We became regulars and got good service from Raj, the owner.  Then Charlie didn't come to Vilnius any more and our meetings tended to be less frequent and involve a fish supper in Zagreb, though if we have good news soon, we hope to be working together in Sarajevo.

A quirk of the menus at Sue's were the dishes which were named after recognisable characters in the expat community. Some of these have been retained in the current menu.  I was unpleasantly surprised to see that the MAJOR RANDY’S CHICKEN “TIKKA” is still there.  I have my own reasons to dislike the gentleman (he evicted me from the house I was renting, because I complained that for the rent, I expected a working TV, in a row of houses owned by his company).  However, he also led the notorious US Williams company who, in a dubious deal, bought the majority share of Mazeikiu Nafta, the Lithuanian oil refinery. This was much to the chagrin of Lukoil, who thought they were a shoe-in.  This deal did nothing much for MN (except for a happy anniversary, which I shall relate in another post) as there was little investment, so it was a relief when they pulled out of Europe (Enron was an ill wind) and sold to Yukos.  In those days that was considered a good deal, as Yukos had its own supply of oil and the likes of Lukoil could not turn off the crude tap as they had been wont to do in the past. Recent Russian gas and oil tactics were used 10 years ago in Lithuania. The story eventually has a happy ending as PK Orlen, the Polish oil company has now bought the refinery.

But back to the restaurant.  Lo and behold this gentleman appears again:

RANDY’S CHICKEN “RESHMI KABAB”
peaces (sic) of chicken fillet marinated in indian herbs and cooked in tandoor. named after the great randy of williams.

Now I would not think it tactful to keep on reminding Lithuanians about Williams, even if he was a good customer.  Are there no current customers who will recommend the place these days?

I was with two Lithuanian friends who like Sue's but don't like hot curries.  One of them is a veggie.  You would have thought that there would be plenty of choice in an Indian restaurant but there isn't in Sue's.  In the end she had fish curry, which she enjoyed.  I'm not used to Indian restaurants that serve just "curry".  Surely it has to have a proper recipe: vindaloo, korma, do piaza? It makes me suspicious.  I suspect it is related to the offerings for British and Norwegian stag nights mentioned specially on the menu, which made me uneasy as to whom I should meet later in the evening.

Our other friend had chicken korma which was fine for him. I had Balti chicken, especially as I got offered Balti from Birmingham, the home in Britain of authentic balti recipes (one hopes).  I quote from the restaurant's website, and menu.

„balti“ is indian dishes representative of a style of cooking which some say is native to baltistan, it‘s a kind of curry. it‘s ingredients usually assembled and cooked quickly in a manner reminiscent of a stir-fried dish. the heart of this style of cooking is a cast-iron pot, originally also called „balti“. „balti“ evolved into half-hemispherical pot likely to be made of steel or iron, and usually called „karahi“ and „balti“. „balti“ is usually both cooked in the „balti“ and „karahi“, and served at the table in it.

This is not so different from the "genuine" article, described here in the Birmingham balti guide. "Balti" as a British food concept (perhaps one should even say as a marketing concept) grew up in the late 70s and early 80s in the Indian "quarter" of Birmingham, around Stoney Lane and Ladypool Road, or the Balti Triangle as it became known.  We were told it was a spicy Kashmiri dish, fit for fierce mountain people on the border between Pakistan and India. 

At that time, it was possible to eat takeaway as a student for less than £1 and if you sat down for a meal, to expect to pay less than £5.  The three or four restaurants were popular with students and lefties like myself. Before the birth of my second child, I made sure I got sufficient iron by eating Balti chicken sag, figuring that either the spinach or the iron pot would supply it. 

Gradually balti became "gentrified", popular with the bourgeoisie and even tourists and prices rose. Now there are hundreds of Balti restaurants all over Birmingham which has its own Balti Guide.   My last visit (December 2005) showed that prices are still low and the food is still copious and authentically Birmingham Balti.  So you can imagine I was excited when I saw on the menu:

BIRMINGHAM‘S „BALTI“ CHICKEN
fresh cubes of chicken served in „balti“ bowl, which gives an exotic indian taste. very popular in Birmingham

Balti is typically served in a wok with the chosen meat and vegetable in a thick sauce, which is eaten with naan, scooping the food up in the naan, rather than eating with a knife and fork.

Alas, it was a fraud.  I was served tandoori chicken pieces (the tandoori instantly recognisable at the edges of the cubes) in some sort dry sauce, and it came in a copper "jug" like everyone else's meal.  Failure on all counts.  We questioned the waitress in case it was a mistake.  We asked her to pass our complaint to the chef.  He did not deign to meet us but sent his explanation that this was "European Balti", as if this was somehow better.  Clearly he has never been to Birmingham, despite the fact that lots of Lithuanians have, and presumably will not now be deceived by expensive substitutes instead of this:

Or this, which comes from a cooking blog, with instructions for cooking balti chicken with tomatoes:

 

 

 

The naans too were a disappointment.  You can see the real thing lurking in the back of the first photo. We ordered two and some thin flat objects appeared  which were more like thin flat lavash.  I have nothing against lavash. In a Georgian  or Armenian restaurant they are excellent.  Alas,the Georgian restaurant in Vilnius, where we enjoyed massive portions of fantastic food, including lavash, is no more. But they were not Balti-style naan from Birmingham, where some restaurants offer naan the size of your table.  They were not even the size of the plate. And there was none of the golden, yeasty look you see here:

In fact they might have passed as small chapattis.  But they were too brittle to function as scoops for food, and they were gone in a twinkling of an eye. We looked at each other wondering where they had vanished.  You definitely know when you have eaten two whole naans. They were also not garlic naan as we ordered. I was glad I had not ordered Peshawar naan. On the menu this was described as "introduced by Christopher" (a former British Ambassador) and I would have been forced to send him an email saying his name was being used in vain.

As for the prices, with Lithuanian wages in the bottom five countries of the EU is there any excuse for prices like Sue's when you can get still get the real thing for less in Adils, Stoney Lane, Birmingham, price list here? Compare Sue's Balti chicken 22 Lt with Adil's Balti chicken £4.95, (£3.80 for some vegetarian baltis).  I agree that Adil's has a view of an Indian sweet shop (also incredible food at bargain prices) in a rather squalid area, rather than the Cathedral in Vilnius.  The decor in Sue's, (with elephants and silver framed chair and tables, plus Lithuanian waitresses in saris) is infinitely superior to the battered tables and chairs of typical Balti restaurants (I remember the only attempt at decor was to add pictures of strange wrestlers).  The waiters (no waitresses) were in typical Birmingham Indian national dress, jeans and sweaters. It was wise never to visit the toilets. All part of Birmingham's charm for visitors!

Isn't it time a real Balti restaurant moved to Vilnius for all those "visitors" coming back home?  British Chamber of Commerce please note a business opportunity for Lithuanians moving back home.

Lest anyone thinks I am totally biassed against Sue's these days, the salt lassi (a new addition as far as I recall) was excellent.

 

Technorati tags: Lithuania, balti, indian restaurant, naan

 

Celebration Dinner Menu

Whilst rooting in my family history box, I remembered this treasure, which dates from my first year in Ukraine, 1995.

 

As part of my work, we were trying to get money for a hospital for Chernobyl victim and so we were invited to visit several hospitals in the Zhitomir region where they hoped to build it.  On the day in question, we had set off in the morning without much idea of what to expect, and the roads were rather bad, so we were planning to come back early.  But things didn't turn out that way.  First we went to a sanatorium which was incredibly depressing and gloomy.  I am sure we were shown a room where they were given radon baths, incredible though that sounds now, as a treatment for heart problems.  Then we had a full Ukrainian lunch with the director, including the usual copious toasts of vodka.  Rather worse for wear we were taken off somewhere else and found ourselves in another hospital which was rather new.  There we repaired to the coffee bar and had some more liquid refreshments and admired the new building. 

Finally about 5pm we arrived in another place where it appeared an annual celebration was to take place and a formal dinner was laid on starting at 7pm.  At this point I should add that we were dressed for warmth with several layers of sweaters, socks and scarves and boots, and looked rather out of place with the medical ladies who were dressed up to the nines in their backless dresses. It was freezing in the banquet hall.  But we were persuaded to stay and eventually we sat down to the menu above, or at least something as copious.

The menu itself is a spoof.  All the items are written as Russian puns or descriptions especially amusing to medical people.    For example under Main Courses, No 4 says Beef steak with blood (from a donor, Group 1, rhesus negative).  Or electric ray, portions with 110 or 220v. For side orders you can have sapogetti, a type of pasta for soldiers (you have to know that sapogi are boots worn by soldiers).  For desert you can have cake with cream (for normal or dry skin).

I don't remember the actual food, though there was a lot, and it was clearly going on for a good few hours.  However, our driver demanded to leave early so we could get home safely in the snow, so we missed most of it.

 

Technorati tags: dinner menu, russian menu

Restaurant Rio 1 rehabilitated

I got up early (well early for me on a Sunday) and had breakfast out on the terrace basking in the sun, and read the Economist. So much for the predicted drop to -8 for last night. Then I worked solidly for several hours (including a bit more cow and people watching: same cows different people no drug pushers). Talking of drugs: thankfully my head has cleared. I think the headache which appeared after my temperature went down must have been due to caffeine deprivation over 3 days as returning to the morning fix of machiato did the trick.

I thought I had earned (and could eat) a proper Sunday lunch so I decided to brave the fish restaurant two houses away from our hotel rather than go back into Pristina. I was invited to this restaurant in my first week in Pristina but the lunch was so disastrous I never went back. It wasn't the food, which was good, but the conversation.

You arrive in a new place and are trying to work out what the obscure work instructions you are given mean in practice and what can be done in reality. You have to meet lots of people whose formal position in relation to your work is not always clear, you have to guess what their hidden agenda is, and how distorted the picture is they paint about what is going on. The first month (or maybe more) can be spent feeling mentally battered until something sensible falls into place. And then there is Kosovo with a fledgling government and a triple layer of international administration, so there is even more to absorb.

So when 18 months ago, I was invited out to lunch at Rio 1 by someone I knew from my previous project and who was in what I thought was an influential position, I was delighted to accept. I arrived rather late (the restaurant was difficult to find) but found myself seated in an orchard in the countryside and with a large fish in front of me. The colleague proceeded to give lots of advice "as a friend" about avoiding the politics and keeping my head down (usually my work assumes that I have to give advice, so this is difficult, and hardly my style either). This warning was delivered in true Balkan conspiracy style without naming any names, just assuming I knew the background and would understand everything. He then carried on by making a vicious personal attack on one of my "bosses", saying the work proposed for me was completely pointless, (at the current stage of the mental battering, I was even inclined to agree with him) and not what was required at all. But this "boss" was someone I had worked with already, had a good relationship with and liked. I didn't understand the reason for the vicious personal attack. Of course then the colleague explained what was really needed. However the bitter taste left in my mouth by the attack had spoilt everything. I remember just struggling to eat an enormous fish and wishing I could leave.

I was still in shock at the viciousness so I don't remember much of the rest of what the colleague said. For a month the atmosphere of my work was tainted as I waited for whatever it was he was warning me about. However when I came back after the summer, the colleague had gone. Gradually I learned that two previous advisers had managed to offend the minister and been removed. So my colleague's warning had been well meant, but could have been less cryptic! By now in Pristina I have got used to everyone attacking everyone else, and even indulge in it myself, though I try not to.

When I realised I was staying 50 metres from Rio 1, I went back one evening to investigate. Its neon light at the entrance was shining but the orchard was deserted. I could see a big barn roof and an outdoor bar but no sign of waiters or other diners. So I retreated.

Finally today I spotted some people going in, so I decided to follow them. It seemed that beyond the barn was a huge restaurant used in the evenings and winter, though most people today were sitting under the rustic barn roof, enjoying the sun's rays coming diagonally under it.

The waiter brought out a selection of fish on a tray for me to choose. It was a choice between seabream and dorade, both small. I was offered a further choice of baked in the oven with white wine and garlic (which I chose) or grilled. I ordered a seafood house special starter and settled down with a glass of white wine to muse on the names of fish in translation, which I will reserve for a later post.

The starter had a risotto with mussels and tiny shrimps, as well as king prawns and calamari (both the shells and the pink babies with lots of legs). Delicious!

For the main course the fish arrived in an open cast iron dish swimming in the wine. Vegetables (carrots, potatoes, tiny pieces of aubergine and spinach) came separately. Apart from too much salt on the spinach, again everything was delicious. I remembered Sunday fish lunches by the sea in Greece and thought this was not bad for Pristina halfway through October.

So like my ex-colleague, restaurant Rio 1 is rehabilitated.

Potatoes

Copydude has been writing about Potato 2007 in Russia. This reminded me of a question to which I have never found an answer.

Before the potato was discovered and brought to the Old World, what did people live on? Not the rich people who could always live on cake, but the poor people? I am interested to know what happened in countries prone to potato famines before there were potatoes. Is there something worse than a potato famine?

This is filed under Lithuania because of the Lithuanians' love of potatoes and their special dish cepelinai, which merits an entry in Wikipedia. I will not comment on their taste or preparation, as Wikipedia covers this sufficiently for you to know that you will never miss them. There they are portrayed in the photo as looking white and fluffy (despite being described as rather heavy), and the instructions not to throw away any of the starch rather contradict this. In real life they are heavy and grey. They have meat inside, but it is that indistinguishable type of meat, that in Britain played a large role in spreading BSE. This is not to imply anything about the Lithuanian cows, however.

I could never get over the fact that although Wikipedia claims that they are only served to guests or heavy labourers, little old ladies in cafes frequently managed to eat two every day for lunch. No foreigner has ever eaten more than one, as far as I know.

I was tempted to make a joke about the name, believing that it showed Lithuanians had a sense of humour naming something so heavy after a zeppelin, but the response of my host showed that no irony in the name was intended, it was just the shape. One also wonders what they were called before zeppelins were invented. Perhaps the modern version was lightened up in the zeppelin's honour.