The US economy is generally collapsing more quickly than other economies. So it’s really a perfect time, exchange-wise, to visit New York City and indulge in what is the centre of the food universe. However it does help having a food-obsessed host to point the way. And with some luck, you can also squeeze in some more traditional sightseeing.

It’s smoking
Char No. 4 is a bar-restaurant with a passion for bourbon. Its interior is appropriately amber-hued and woody. The 19^th-century row house location in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn might make it potentially pretentious. But it’s not. They serve ‘American fare with a focus on smoked meat’. And anyway, I have long trusted my food-obsessed host to regularly reward me for knowing him. He is the man who earlier introduced me to such global culinary touchstones as the ‘herring in a fur coat’ at Petrovich and the rainbow of innards that they concoct at St John.

Char No. 4 can indeed provide complementing bourbons to accompany each of their morsels of comfort food.  The fried jambalaya rice balls with Andouille aioli had me feeling like I was back home in the land of Dutch kroketten and bitterballen – and I mean that in a good way and not a bad. But I am an emotional eater and I only really started to get weepy when I tasted the house-cured lamb pastrami with coriander aioli, pickled onions and grilled rye-caraway bread. By the time we were served the roasted salmon with black kale, roasted garlic and smoked pistachio-preserved lemon vinaigrette, my eyes had turned into waterfalls. It was all top nosh. On our way out, we bumped into the chef who said it was his last night before heading to California. Now it was my food-obsessed host’s turn to get overly emotional.

Borscht memories
After visiting the stacked silver boxes of the excellent and appropriately named New Museum, I was standing on the corner of 2nd and 9th in East Village waiting to meet friends for lunch at the famed Ukrainian eatery Veselka (read a great profile here). I used to eat here regularly years ago as a displaced teen and remember it always being filled with one half Ukrainian locals and the other half proto-hipsters (this was in the late 1980s before the neo-hipsters found succour in Williamsburg).

While watching the traffic going by I leaned back on a newspaper box for Village Voice and started to wonder why this weekly seems to halve in size each time I visit. Certainly Craig’s List took a big bite out of their classifieds business. But did Chowhound take a bite out of their reviewing business?

Suddenly my food-obsessed host bikes by. I experience the moment of recognition as a small stroke as he lives in Brooklyn and this just seemed like too much of a coincidence. But he just happened to be having lunch with his own food-obsessed friend a few blocks up. After I recover, he reassured me that while the rest of the hood has gentrified, Veselka remains a prime choice for lunch. (Later I would bump into him again a couple of times nearer his home while he was out getting Montreal bagels or sourcing fresh sardines from one of the excellent food shops along Court Street. This is just how it flows in a megapolis.)

Veselka’s borscht proved to be perfect and the varenyky dumplings divine. My first urge when confronted with the cabbage rolls was to just slap my face down hard on top of them and just start truffling down like a hog in heat. But to avoid burning my nose and eyes in the rich mushroom sauce, I tried to slow down by telling the story about my best friend growing up. His mother was Ukrainian. Whenever we were overly-energetic little boys, she would yell: ‘Boys please calm up; you are making me climb the ceiling.’ Oh, we would laugh. And then the next day we would point and laugh at my Dutch mother whenever she got all freestyle with the expressions of her new country – ah, the lot of the immigrant. Actually now that I think back, my friend and I were not actually to blame for our excessive energy levels. We were just still buzzing from the beet sugar in the borscht his mother had fed us for lunch.

Veselka’s borsht gave me the drive to walk very, very quickly across Manhattan towards Chelsea and finally check out the much-hyped ‘green’ (read: ridiculously over-designed but nice) High Line walkway that used to be the elevated train track that brought all the meat in and out of the Meat Packing District. Food history: it’s everywhere in New York.

The bread of Georgia
It was assumed by my food-obsessed host that we would stop off at Georgian Bread on our epic bike ride to Jacob Riis Park. Riis (1849-1914) was not a foodie but a journalist-reformer who used his camera to document slum life and invented flash photography on the way. So in a way, he can be considered a father of food photography.

As we cycled through Brighton Beach, not far from Coney Island, I was triggered by sense memories from years past: the sweat of a Russian bath house, the gentle squeak of a Nathan’s hotdog, being hypnotised by an old man slowly baking mighty pies in a pizza joint called Di Fara. This imperturbable Italian would pull out each pizza during the long baking process to give the bubbling mass a few massaging pokes with his fingers. He would then slice out some more fresh mozzarella here, and ladle out some more sauce there. Then he would put the pizza back into the oven for a few more minutes before repeating the whole process again. Meanwhile the line of saliva puddles would extend around the block. When I asked my food-obsessed host about the current state of Di Fara, he answered: ‘Now it’s just completely Disneyland.’

The Georgian bakers were however keeping it very real. In a small, hot room with a single clay oven, two men made two types of bread: a baguette-like shotipuri and a cheesy khachapuri. We opted for the cheesy to go. The older baker bagged it and passed it over a narrow counter. A small fridge was filled with a few dips and the intensely-mineral Borjomi mineral water. (And just to be clear: we are not talking about Georgia the state of pulled pork, but about Georgia the country in the Caucasus, much celebrated for their culinary skills, winemaking traditions, and being the birthplace of Stalin.)

Later on the empty and windswept beach of Jacob Riis Park with its abandoned art deco pavilion, we pulled out the crispy Frisbee-sized disk filled with salty, pudding-textured cheese. As it melted in our mouths, we all stared at each other with disbelief. Can something made by humans actually taste this good? We aided digestion by contemplating the sea, until someone tells us that this is the point where Hurricane Irene entered the city a few weeks earlier. ‘NYC has become a tropical climate, don’t you know?

A perfect Mexican. Dammit!
Perhaps my food-obsessed host had climate change in mind, when we later went to the Mexican restaurant Fonda in Park Slope. After cycling away cheese bread calories, it proved to be the perfect spot to unwind over a couple of spicy michelada beer cocktails. And dammit, the food was excellent again. But I was enjoying it less now because I was beginning to resent not living fulltime in a culinary capital. There were a few moments, for instance when picking at a huge wooden bowl filled with perfect guacamole, that I got distracted and started to unconsciously hum a happy tune. But otherwise I just complained about how Amsterdam has little range when it comes to cheap eats – Suri-Indo-Chin and, klaar, that’s it. Give me cheap Mexican! Give me cheap Vietnamese! Give me cheap sushi! Hell, I’d even be happy with a mid-range Serbian!

Finally, something real to complain about
Welcome to Williamsburg. My food-obsessed host warned us against going to Diner on a weekend, but we did not listen. We were stupid. But we had to be in the neighbourhood anyway and who can resist an authentically rundown diner in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge serving locally-sourced dishes? But while wedged in among the hipsters, we ended up waiting an hour for a table and then an hour for our food.

Except for a signature burger, Diner’s specials change daily – to the point that the amazingly chilled wait-staff sit down with you to write down all the specials on the paper table cloth. But in the end we were too hungry to care. We inhaled once, maybe twice, and our plates were empty. But the meals were obviously straight-up fine. It could have been quite possibly perfect on a week day. But I would never rebel against my food-obsessed host again.

Holy duck
My food-obsessed host remembered that I come from generations of duck harvesters. So it was sweet of him to take me for our last lunch to the corner of 2^nd and 13^th to Momofuku Ssam Bar, owned by the acclaimed Korean-American chef David Chang (a man known for his swearing and his love for offal). Their duck lunch is definitely of a whole fresh other feather. First a duck-and-pork sausage is embedded under the duck’s skin. This mutant hybridogenesis is then roasted on a rotisserie before being cut up and served with rice (which absorbed the melange of fats), duck confit (which adds yet greater depth to the melange of fats), chive pancakes (also handy to absorb the melange of fats), Bibb lettuce for wrapping (which help keep your fingers less sticky from the melange of fats), and a quartet of freaky sauces (which each combine in their own exotic way with the melange of fats).

As we made quacking and snorting sounds of delight at the bar, a brown-roasted pig buttock – a rather cute, rounded one – is served to the table across from us. It comes with a dozen oysters and rows of bowls with different kinds of fermented kimchi. Meanwhile in the open kitchen a guy is handling tripe that looks as if it came from a water buffalo. Serious stuff. A few weeks after our lunch, NY Times food critic Sam Sifton cited Momofuku Ssam Bar as his top choice for ‘For Blowing the Mind of an Out-of-Town Guest’.

I totally agreed. My mind was blown. And certainly my belly felt pretty blown on the airplane back home.

As deeply enigmatic tubes, eels are 100-million-year-old slime wonders with authentic phallic mystique. A connoisseur no less than Freud spent a summer as a medical student slicing and dicing hundreds of eels in what proved to be a failed search for their sex organs. And to this day, their sex rites remain shrouded by the bottomless Sargasso, leaving scientists to hypothesize about the actual nature of the orgy of lust that climaxes the eels’ journey of thousands of miles.

Indeed, this mysterious beast generates more questions than answers. How can a decapitated eel still find its way to the nearest water? How can they so effortlessly alternate between salt and fresh water? Is it true that a ‘drinking wine suffused with fragments of its skin might turn a drunkard into a teetotaller’? And why would Sophia Loren, at the height of her loveliness, choose to play an eel factory worker in the film La Donna del Fiume?

But of course the fundamental question remains: why are they so darn tasty? Aristophanes rightly described their gustatory delight as ‘oh my sweetest, my long-awaited desire’. It was certainly easy for eels of yore to suavely slither into Amsterdam’s mass culinary consciousness by allowing themselves to be smoked and then sold from fish stalls. People can say I’m full of brown trout, but I believe that the eel – intent on becoming Amsterdam’s spirit animal by broadening its appeal to politics – allowed itself to get caught up in a local sport popular in the 19th Century called palingtrekken (‘eel pulling’). This game involved dangling a live-eel-on-a-rope over a canal and trying to jerk it off from a wobbly boat below. Our slippery friend ‘won’ whenever a puller failed and fell into the canal.

It was this sport – one that can be argued as the evolutionary missing link between dwarf-tossing and Ajax football – that led to the Eel Riot. By that time the sport had been banned but it continued to be practiced in the Jordaan, then a staunchly working-class district. One day, when the police attempted to break up an illegal game of eel-pulling, the people decided to fight back – not for the right to pull eel, but to live life in less poverty. The army was called in to enforce the peace, with usual tragic results: 26 dead.

The newly united neighbourhood went on to organize peaceful social change. And according to Amsterdam, een lastige stad (‘Amsterdam, An Awkward City’) by JM Fuchs, the eel that sparked it all was later sold in 1913 at an auction for 1.75 guilders before disappearing from view. Let’s take a moment to remember this working-class eel-ro.

My friends, the brothers Marijn en Michiel Slager of Zeeuwse monster rock band Nuff Said, just posted their above video report (in Dutch) from the ‘world’s biggest kroket’ event that took place in Amsterdam in October 2007. I was also reporting from this special day in grease history. I recall being as excited as Kermit the Frog when he reported live from the scene of Humpty Dumpty’s nasty fall. Now thanks to the Slager Brothers, I can relive those happy, but mixed, memories. I pasted my own report here:

SUPER SIZE KROKET
A marketing sham. But at least it was a freebie feast.
Amsterdam Weekly, 1 November 2007
By Steve Korver

‘Kom op, met die grootste kroket,’ says a 10-year-old boy, pretty much summing up the anticipation felt on Rembrandtplein last Saturday, before the kroket manufacturers Van Dobben presented their much-hyped ‘world’s biggest kroket’ — a 250 kilogram, one-and-half-metre long and half-metre thick hunk of deep-fried meat-and-potato goo, which required a bubbling bath of 1,200 litres of oil to bring its shell to maximum crustiness.

A talking head from the company explains over the microphone about how they wanted — with the help of an advertising agency — to do something ludieks, and give something back to Amsterdam. ‘After all, they’ve taken away most of our amsterdammertjes.’ So, Van Dobben decided, as compensation for the loss of these iconic parking poles, to give the world its biggest kroket ever. It makes perfect sense really.

As the crowd grows restless, personnel are handing out — for ‘gratis, eh’ — regular-sized kroketten, not only of  the standard beef ragout version, but also ones stuffed with haring, beer, apple pie or pea soup (the ‘snertkroket’ as one onlooker described it). All of these versions had been submitted to public scrutiny in an online vote during the past month, to decide which of the fillings would form the stuffing of the elephantine version.

As the volkszanger Dries Roelvink takes the stage, a thick Amsterdam accent rises from the crowd to note how the overtly tanned Roelvink is the perfect poster boy for this event: ‘Hij ziet er uit als een doorgebakken kroket!’

Roelvink was the ambassador for the idea that the world’s biggest kroket should have the pea-soup filling. When Petra Boots, the editor of Weekend who’s presenting on stage, makes a joke about how it would have been more fitting for him to have represented the beer kroket, he answers: ‘Well you’ve obviously never seen me in my yellow swimming trunks.’ The crowd exchanges looks of deep confusion: ‘What the hell does that mean?’

Finally the big moment arrives, as the monster kroket — supposedly filled with the vote-winning standard beef ragout — gets rolled up the red carpet, accompanied by a meatball shaped security guard with a handlebar moustache. The crowd presses in with cameras over their heads, so they can have a good look. Another chunky Amsterdam accent enquires: ‘What’s going on? Do they think a naked lady is going to pop out of there?’

It’s a mob. Kids start breaking out in tears. A mother starts to panic and call out for her ‘Luukje!’ The woman behind the microphone tries to keep the mood light: ‘There’s a kid under the kroket!’ The mother is not amused. More children start crying. And is that a fight breaking out in the corner?

Finally, the crowd thins enough for less aggressive folk to come in close for a gander. It’s big alright. The size of a human hotdog. But it’s also a big disappointment. Only a few people actually taste it and for good reason, it seems: the crust/ragout ratio is obviously out of whack — it’s pretty much the same thickness as a normal kroket, and the filling is obviously more potato than ragout.

When asked what’s going to happen with the kroket now the display is over, a man in a Van Dobben uniform answers: ‘I guess it’ll go in the recycling bin.’

But the crowd seems satisfied. Only one small group, out to give grease yet more of a chance, decides to head up the road to eat shrimp kroketten at Holtkamp on Vijzelstraat. Sometimes it’s just worth it paying the extra.

Over at Unfold Amsterdam, I wrote a new installment about food — or rather: grease. 

Are You Finished with That?
Episode 2: Will the ‘hairdresser’ enter the Global Grease Canon?
On my first encounter with the patatje kapsalon — ‘hairdresser fries’ — I did not actually taste, or even see, the product. I was merely a witness to its after-effects. I had dropped by the practice space of some friends who usually play a rather rigorous rock ‘n’ roll. But this time when I walked in, they were all lying around lost in some sort of space jam. Occasionally one of them would fart. And then apologise (they may be rock ‘n’ roll but they are also polite and well brought-up boys). After the seventh apology they admitted to indulging in a kapsalonnetje from a nearby Turkish snackbar… [READ THE REST HERE...] 

See previous posting for my first installment of my food/Amsterdam series. I’ve also written about the food/grease equation HERE, HERE and HERE.

Over at Unfold Amsterdam I just started a new column Are You Finished With That? about food and Amsterdam. At first I wanted to write a column about ‘chairs’ but I think ’food’ gives me more freedom. After all, while we often sit down to eat, we rarely eat chairs. The column’s first episode begins with the following paragraph:

ARE YOU FINISHED WITH THAT?
Episode 1: Cafe Plop
A large orange mushroom has popped up on Mercatorplein. It’s the newly-opened Cafe Zurich and it’s meant to bring more glam to the gentrifying De Baarsjes neighbourhood. Many locals already call it ‘Cafe Plop’, a reference to a deeply odd children’s TV show starring the singing gnome Plop, who deals milk from his cosy little ’shroom shack…. [READ THE REST HERE]

Pretty amazing. Via the Royal Dutch Library one can now search, or just browse through, the most important newspapers in the Netherlands  between 1618 and 1995, including ones from the former Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), Suriname and the Antilles. If you search for ‘kaas‘ (cheese) you get a total of 94 763 hits…  Mmm cheese.

Mmmm. Breakfast.

My feature on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (and the 60th anniversary of the rise of Currywurst) is published today in the Globe&Mail. It was a hard one to write mostly because it is such a dense and telling tale. I   visited Berlin a few months after it happened and the images that still stick was of children playing in the watchtowers and the big bales of collected barbwire —  forming  5-10  meter high tumbleweeds of rusting iron. So anyway  I had to leave a lot of wacky facts out of the article in the name of readability. Luckily I have no such constraints here. Oh, and if you want more on ostalgia just check out my previous  Globe&Mail feature on the 15th anniversary….

Funniest story I heard was from my esteemed hosts Mr and Mrs Cameron (who have been living the revolution in Mitte quite a few years now…)  who told me of a group of West Berlin friends who  found a hole in the wall and went for a look in East Berlin. When they returned they found the hole had been closed up — they were stuck! But luckily, for them the Wall properly fell the next day.

There are a few tricks for the visitor to  differentiate between former East and West halves. East Berlin has much more animated and jaunty figures in their crosswalk lights. Linguists now also know that it just takes 29 years, the time the wall existed, for distinct dialects to develop.

By 1980 an estimated 100,000 West Berliners were living life in a subculture — via cafes, communes, squats and generally radical lefty politics. (Today the most affluent of this generation support some of the largest organic supermarkets in Europe.)

You know you are buying an authentic GDR postcard by its flimsiness — and by the fact that you are overcharged for it.

And in the world of currywurst:

I had some earlier thoughts on sausage. The mighty currywurst is apparently called the “white trash plate” in Cologne and Dusseldorf but “chancellor’s plate” in Hannover. Also interesting: Gerhard  Schroeder was known as the “currywurst chancellor”.  And Volkswagon developed their own recipe  that can only be bought in factory canteens. In 1982, the singer Herbert Groenemeyer sang passionately of his nightly desires for the mighty wurst  (this YouTube clip is not for the queasy of stomach but boy does Herbert sing from the heart).

Now for something completely different:
After all that heavy street food (especially since you’ll also have to pay tribute to the Turk, Mahmut Aygun, who invented the now universal Doner Kebab here in 1972), there’s nothing like Japanese noodles. Cocolo (Gipsstrasse 3, 0172 3047584, ) serves some of the best Japanese noodle soup on the planet. Owner Ollie not only cooks but also built everything — from the furnishings to the  service to the kitchen — from scratch. Inspiring! Also, Restaurant Schoenbrunn is a lovely and  fancy place to dine in Volkspark Friedrichshain. Aid digestion by climbing the  nearby hills which were  built from the debris of WWII.

For dessert, one can pop into a baker for a Berliner (more commonly known as a Pfannkuchen in Berlin itself), the pastry JFK accidentally referred to in his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech to half a million bewildered Berliners in 1963.

But  to conclude:  
Mir ist alles Wurst!
Es geht um die Wurst!
Sei keine beleidigte Leber wurst!

I was just in Berlin  researching the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall and the 60th anniversary of currywurst. What a town! And what a vibrant street snacking culture! That is, if you like sausage (though respect must also be given to Mahmut Aygun who invented the donor kebab in this very same city in 1972). The mighty currywurst now even has its own Currywurst Museum. I took the above photo there:  it’s a 3D map of all the currywurst stands in Berlin. Very handy!  And  can now  someone please  come up with iPhone application version of this? More on walls and wursts coming soon…