San Sebastian: Part 1

San Sebastian (or Donostia as the locals call it) was the next stop after Barcelona. This town is known for their pintxos (tapas) and cider. So if you're tired of looking at food, there's nothing to see here ...

This was a really fun town though. Everyone's super relaxed, though likely because it's a resort town. People are friendly. And they serve pintxos pretty much all day long. However, it was also the town where I got really really sick. So I'll always have mixed memories of San Seb.

The view from our hotel room.





Walking along the beach towards Old Town.



One of many pintxos bars we visited. They all have tons of plates spread out with all different types of pintxos. It's pretty much like a buffet, and they go by the honor system when you go to tally up your bill at the end. Also, the better the spread, the more people you'll find there.



Of course, we had to order a platter of jamon iberico. Muy delicioso!



And churros and chocolate. Hello! We got this twice. So good. After you're done dipping the hot crispy churros into the thick chocolate, you pour the milk into the chocolate and have yourself some hot chocolate. Brilliant!



And here's a bunch of fancy-looking pintxos that we didn't try, including some gilded artichoke.



This one, we did try. I think it won some awards, and rightfully so. It was good.



And really, no visit to a city is complete without some gelato. I think we went to this place at least three times.



Stay tuned for more ... And I hear it's Memorial Day weekend back home. Have a good weekend!

copenhagen house swap available

anyone thinking of visiting copenhagen next year? the apartment where we've been staying is available for a house swap. i think that basically means, if you have an apartment in san francisco and can swap houses for a couple weeks with our danish landlords, you get free housing. no need to shell out any money for a hotel! i think that's a pretty awesome deal, especially since copenhagen isn't exactly a cheap place to visit.

and i wouldn't post this if i didn't like our apartment, but look at it. totally cute. and comfortable. and convenient. i'd stay here again the next time we're in town.

it's a quick walk to the metro. two or three metro stops from the city center. the apartment gets a lot of light (we installed blackout shades so we could sleep). double bed. tv and dvd player in the living area. wifi. a balcony just beyond the dining area. fully equipped kitchen and bathroom. they provided two sets of sheets and two sets of bath towels. laundry in the basement. supermarket and shopping center right across the street. direct access to the airport.

bonus: the couple is super sweet. they greeted us on our arrival day with a bottle of chilled wine and a cheerful vase of tulips. plus, they just dropped off my security deposit five days ahead without checking out the apartment (so trusting!). and they have two grown daughters who live in copenhagen, so you'd have locals available if you had any questions or issues.

ok, time to stop sounding like an infomercial. let me know if you're interested!

barcelona

yep, we're not so good at keeping this thing updated. anyone still reading? i bet we'll be back home before we even get to writing about stuff here in copenhagen. anywho. this is our final week in cph. we leave next monday for our next stop, a small town outside lille, on the belgium side.

but before we get to any of that ... barcelona! this was the next stop after italy.

we arrived in barcelona right in the middle of siesta on a saturday. and we were hungry. so that meant tapas at the local mall. at a place called la gargola de notre dame - frankfurt cerveseria, where i had a magners cider. how's that for international. we also had the classics: patatas bravas and croquetas.



and then some filipinos for dessert. in chocolate-covered cookie form. i chose the dark chocolate version.



the following night, we had some proper tapas at paco meralgo.



and the next day, we joined a bike tour with our guide buddha from australia. it was super fun and we would have probably not seen most of the sights if it weren't for the tour, so i'd definitely recommend fat tire bike tours. plus it ends with lunch at the beach with some sangria. how can you pass that up?













guess who was the one person among the whole bike tour who had to swap out her bike for a kid's bike?



that night, we enjoyed some of barcelona's finest dining at alkimia. awesome meal.



and the next day, we took a final stroll through our hotel before checking out.













kidding! i wish we stayed here. maybe next time. and yes, i've skipped sharing some meals here. i've gotten a few comments now that all we show is food. too much? or do you want more? or what would you like to see?

guestroom interior picture from here

week 3: snack attack

image from here

The third week was even more dizzying than the last 2. Put in a good 3 days of work, but then became completely disoriented on day 4. Got thrown into a few new things and combined with my new arch-nemesis, reindeer lichen, I pretty much had the worst day yet. Luckily, I recovered the next day...but this Tuesday looks to be another one where we'll all have to dig deep.

Just for comparison's sake, the last section I was in was called "production" it basically exists to tackle larger (read, generally more labor intensive) projects for the other sections. Lots of herb picking, nut peeling, chervil tree making, stem making...that sort of thing. Maybe once a week, we'd also process about 20 boxes of live scallops or maybe do 7 hours worth of bone marrow processing. It's typically the stuff people tell stories about...infinite tedium to do little things. Lots of work for sure, but since it isn't a service section per se, it doesn't have quite the same pressure as the other sections. And in retrospect, I can definitely see the importance of that work in the final dishes. Sure, I'd bet that there are kitchens out there that simply try to do that kind of work to keep stages "busy", but here at least...I'd say it's definitely necessary. Also, it is an excellent place to see the menu as you help out on the services for private parties. In that situation it's typically a sous plus a chef de partie running the service and grabbing hands as they need it...so you could have up to 9 people available to attend to a single table that maxes out at around 16 people, and all of the mise en place has already been prepared by the sections that own each dish.

In snacks, there are usually 4 of us (chef de partie plus 3 stages), responsible for 11 dishes, beginning to end, all of which are served sequentially right at the start of the meal (typically 35 people for lunch and another 50 for dinner). What this means is that it's typically the busiest section in the kitchen. Granted, when we're the most busy, the kitchen rapidly throws hands where its needed....you simply can't plate 20 of these without help. (it's a piece of toast where a sauce is dotted in a specific way on the toast, then a specific assortment of herbs are individually placed into the dots...it's then dusted with vinegar powder and then a duck skin is placed on top before being served) In any case, one of the stagiers in our section finished his tour before the week was out leaving us a man down for two days. Given that everyone is already running at full speed even when fully staffed, and add to that the fact that I've got to pick up new tasks...and things get very challenging. But that's how it is over here...there really is no "training period" for anything...you get thown into it, try not to fuck up too much, and you better be able to do it better and faster tomorrow or you'll really be in the shit.

And that's what waits for me at 6AM tomorrow...

stockholm

in 16 hours from now, the shum half of this team is heading to stockholm for a few days ... drop a note if you have any suggestions, especially good cheap eats and designy stuff

=)

It's Friday!

We hope to include a room like this in our future home ...



at louisiana museum

eataly ... the real thing

so, from sf, we went to new york, to taipei, to sapporo, to osaka, to frankfurt ... and then to milan and venice and a day trip to sarmeola.

we decided to include venice because aj hadn't been there since high school and it's a generally romantic city. we included milan because i wanted to go shopping in the motherland of fashion.

well, venice turned out to be only ok. our first hotel was sub-par. if you're going to stay in venice, i would highly recommend staying in a hotel out in venice mestre (first city on the mainland, not on the island). a 1EUR train ticket will get you to venice in only 10 minutes and the hotels seem much nicer (refer to my previous post for a visual comparison of the rooms).

i thought we might check out some murano glass or burano lace while we were out there, but i knew i wasn't going to buy any of it, so we skipped that part. our hunt for good snacks ended up being the highlight of venice.





milan actually ended up being more fun than venice. our hotel was awesome. gelato was excellent. super tasty breakfast self-catered from local delis. and the window-shopping could not be beat. i would have come out with so many new pairs of shoes, if only they had my size! perhaps next time we go, it will have to be before the stores get raided by models and editors in town for milan fashion week.







our side trip to sarmeola (small village in Padova/Padua) was planned entirely around the first "destination meal" of our trip. by "destination meal," i mean i wore a dress, aj wore his sport coat, and we used a credit card. it's the kind of meal reserved typically for celebrations like birthdays or anniversaries. but in our case, it's career research. and this research session left me overstuffed. i'll let aj do the recap, since that's his thing, but i will tell you, my dessert was accompanied by a small video projector.

week 2: Sonic Boom and Thyme Crisis

image from here

So, I stepped things up a bit this week, and so next week I'm moving to a new section, and a whole new set of challenges! Let's go... Separately, I'll tell you a small tale of just how the smallest details can make a huge difference in a day....

One of the things that has to be done every single day is that 30 grams of lemon thyme has to be picked. No stems, no yellow leaves, no black leaves....so pretty much you have to pick each "good" leaf by hand. Usually this is not a big deal, it takes right around 1 hour and 15 minutes to complete. Until of course, the day I discover that the lemon thyme is not in the herb fridge ready for us to pick as it is every day. There's some left from the day before, but not nearly enough to get us through.

So as I'm picking what's left, I start asking where I can find some more...first I ask the guy who put away all the herbs this morning...he says he didn't see any come in. I then ask the chef de partie who's responsible for checking all deliveries, and he says that one package did come in, he saw it himself, and that I should re-check with they guy who put it all away...= waste of time loop #1(har har! pun #1). Still picking away at the dwindling stash, I recall faintly that pastry also uses lemon thyme. So I send someone to run downstairs to get it from them before we run out of thyme (har har! pun #2).

He comes back and tells me, "pastry's got it, but they don't want to give it to us...they have to pick through it first." waste of time loop #2. So, then I have to run down to the sugar sluts and charm them with my pimpin ways. I find out that their dish requires the nice "tips" of thyme and since there's only one package...they need every tip they can get or they'll be in the shit. Also, they're super specific about what's an acceptable thyme tip vs an unacceptable one. I strike a deal...and make out with the golden package of thyme (eww gross). Now, our task is two-fold, we have to pluck out perfect tips for the dough hoes, and pick the leaves for ourselves. We work furiously to pluck out tips and spit out stems that we can pick for our mise en place. I have the guys just pick enough to give us enough thyme (har har! pun #3)to work with...then run downstairs with the tips and the rest of the unpicked thyme. They're happy with the tips...and it's back upstairs to continue to pick what we need.

Of course, on this happy day, the thyme is also shittier than it ever has been...it's wispy, sparse, and more difficult to pick through than usual. Great-o! We run out what we took and need more...so back down stairs for more thyme... Run back upstairs, and this time we do things in reverse...we pick our stuff and leave the tips to send back down stairs.

In the end all of this nonsense turns a 1:15 minute job into a 2:15 job...which means 1 hr less in the day to get a shit ton of work done. And because of this, I will always appreciate the sous chef who orders the product (because he'll get me more, higher quality thyme for the next day), and the cdp who accepts the deliveries, the guy who puts away the herbs, and pastry for picking through the bunches first before giving it to us to do our thing...All for a little herbage.