Friday, February 20, 2015

The Search for Delicious 3: The Great and Mysterious Restaurant Zhou Yulong


I had heard whispers of a Chinese restaurant, a very very good Chinese restaurant, which is a hot commodity here in Madrid.  Something about it not having a sign, and I wasn't sure whether that meant it had a name but it wasn't posted or maybe there wasn't a sign because there was no name to put on the sign.  

Although my interest was piqued at the time, without much more information about its whereabouts, I soon forgot about it.  That is, until a picture popped up on my instagram feed from Eating España. I saw a very sizable bowl of noodles, and a caption that said "welcome to the hidden chino under plaza de españa."  As far as I knew, there wasn't anything under Plaza de España at all besides maybe a parking garage.  So I went to investigate, walking down an unmarked set of stairs, and sure enough, I found myself in a parking lot, with no sign of a restaurant and nothing but cars and an Enterprise office.  

A little frustrated but still determined, I walked back up the steps and walked around the plaza a bit, looking for some other entrance.  I found it an entrance marked "Entrada para peatones," stairs leading downwards.  I walked into a hallway, and the first thing I saw was a Chinese travel agency.  I walked a little further and saw some tables through the glass of a room that could fit at most 30 people.  But there was no sign, and I started to look at the menu that was posted on the wall, and there were the tallarines caseras or homemade noodles.  So this was it.  And then I looked at the door and saw a sizable collection of star stickers from various online food/travel sites.

I ordered the noodles and a bottle of water received my food in about 5 minutes or so.



Long and thick egg noodles swim in a beef based broth spotted with scallions and green onions.  Cooked ground beef (which it took a second to get used to) and pickled chilis top the mound of noodles.  You're going to have to slurp, but you'll enjoy it. After finishing, I got my bill, and it was 5,50€ with the bottled water.

This was one of those meals, one of those restaurants that you want to shout from the rooftops about.  I went for the first time on Thursday afternoon for lunch by myself. 

 I was back with three friends on Saturday night for dinner, and we ordered more food, steamed pork buns for under a €, Tsing Tao beer, which I thought tasted better than a lot of the Spanish beer you get here, stir fried noodles, delectable pork spare ribs, and dumplings, all shared communally.  

 Photo cred to Andy Kai Nagashima

My friends are huge ramen fans, and although this isn't ramen, they were as blown away as I was by the quality of the noodle soup, especially given the price. We went the next Saturday, the same group plus two more, and we've never paid more than 10€ a person including drinks. Once you go for the first time, you'll want to go more. You'll tell your friends in Madrid.  You'll bring people from out of town to this place. It is the definition of a diamond in the rough.


Thursday, February 19, 2015

Cercedilla


Five of us met up at the Chamartin train station and caught a cercanías train to Cercedilla, a small town in the very northwestern part of the Comunidad de Madrid, close to the border with Castile y León. It is about 56 km away from the city proper and is situated in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range. The price was around 9 € for both tickets, ida y vuelta. 

The ride was about 70 minutes long, and we moved out of the city and into the campo. Deer darted amongst wide spreading orchards along side us, and soon the terrain became craggier, and evergreens began to predominate. We arrived at the station and after taking one or two wrong turns, found the road that leads to El Parque Regional de la Cuenca Alta del Manzanares, an enormous park that stretches across a large swath of the northern part of the Comunidad de Madrid. 

We left Cercedilla and walked along the road, directed by yellow arrows spray painted on walls, trees, and telephone poles.  It was mid-October but still very warm, somewhere in the 60s, and a few of the trees were starting to turn an almost dandelion yellow.  The scenery helps assuage the fact that it’s about a 2.5 km walk to get to the beginning of the trails.



There are a variety of different trails, of varying levels of intensity and length.  We did Los miradores which I think was supposed to be a 4 or 5 km trail.  We moved up in altitude fairly quickly, and the beginning of the hike was the most strenuous (still not bad though) of the entire hike, as we cut back and forth on switchbacks before reaching a road sized path.  From there we headed towards one of the miradores, a vista point (mirar means to look or watch).  We could see very far out into the valley, and we had a little break for lunch on one of the huge rocks that littered the area.

 
We also had a great view of the Sierra Guadarrama, and the range stretched out in either direction.  We continued on a trail, although there was some confusion about whether it was the right one or not, and it led us right along the mountainside.  The terrain was reminiscent of Yosemite, defiant but beautiful. 



We asked two Spaniards eventually where we were and how to get back, and the directed us towards a “gate” and an old roman road that would take us right back to the entrance of the park.  Along the way, they told us, there would be a look out point where one could see Segovia, located at least 10-15km away in Castile y León.   



We didn’t see Segovia, but we did find a leg of the Camino de Santiago, headed northwest through Castile y León and into Galicia towards the Catedral in Santiago de Compostela.  Where we were was 599 km away from the end of the Camino, so instead of trying to make a couple month trip out of it, we caught an old Roman road down into the Valle de Fuenfría.  La calzada romana was created during the reign of the Emperor Vespasian somewhere around 70 CE. 




In the valley, hard woods, cedars, and evergreens were in an even proportion.  Ferns and moss covered the floor, and the ría Fuenfría ran right down the middle, clear as glass.  We weaved left and right, tilted slightly down hill and were at the park exit in about 30 or 40 minutes.  The verdure of the valley was a great compliment to the rockiness of the mountains. 



Overall, we were there for about 5 or 6 hours, and hiked 10 km or maybe more, including the walk to and from the train station.  The scenery was amazing, and the fresh mountain air was a welcome respite from the city.  Retiro is wonderful, but nothing beats the mountains.  I’m planning to go back soon with a group of friends, and there are also outdoor natural pools that would make for an excellent time once it gets warmer.  So whether you want to go all the way to the peaks, just walk around, or even chill in a pool, Cercedilla has something for you.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Search for Delicious Part 2: Paris



Gastronomy
            Noun 
The art or science of good eating
            Origin:  Greek gastronómia à French gastronomie  1805-1815

            Just as there is an ars moriendi (art of dying) and an ars vivendi (art of living), there is an art of cooking and eating, an art that the French have done much to advance.  While French cuisine has long been held up as the apogee of Western gastronomy, the classiest of the classy, I was more impressed with the caliber of the simple things. A loaf of bread.  A bit of cheese.  A glass of wine. 

            This being said, the first thing I ate in Paris was McDo, an 8,50 € chicken wrap with potato wedges, and a Sprite.   I got into Paris around 9, and since I was in France and not Spain, dinner time had passed already.  It was an ignominious start to my stay, but once you’re at rock bottom, you can only go up. 

            And up I went.  My first morning I made myself an omlette du fromage with farm fresh eggs, a little bit of cheese, and ate it with a subtle French white wine.  Later that afternoon, I had a cup of French onion soup, topped with a big chunk of bread smothered in Gruyere cheese.  A secret to greatness that the French have thoroughly adopted is that cheese and butter make everything better.

            The next morning, my friend that I was staying with picked up a fresh baguette from the corner boulangerie and made us tartines, which are more or less open faced little sandwiches.  The glory that is a really fine piece of bread is hard to equal; the crispy and flaky outside that promises the soft, chewy, spongy, interior.  We spread real, honest to God butter on our slices and topped them with confiture, or jam or preserves.  Combined with black coffee, it was a delightful breakfast, if not the healthiest (no surprise that the word decadent also comes to us from the French). 

            And what could be more decadent than cheese? Lots and lots of smooth, creamy, slightly smelly cheese?  I shared a cheese plate with a couple of friends, while sipping on vin rouge and spreading it on bread with a smile spread right across my face.  Camembert. Brie. Rocquefort. Boursin. 

Although I always maintain that red wine goes well with most everything, I’ve since found out that the majority of cheeses, especially fresher, creamier cheeses, are better paired with white wines.  Red wines should be saved for more robust and denser cheeses, like cheddars or more cured cheeses like Manchego.  Of course this always resolves itself for me into an and/both situation rather than an either/or situation, so red and white, the best of both worlds.   
                                              
For those of you in Madrid, I found this out and more by visiting Quesería Conde Duque (Conde Duque 15).  They have an astounding assortment of cheeses, both Spanish and otherwise, for reasonable prices.  I bought three different cheeses, enough to supply 8 or so people, for a little over 5 €, and an extremely nice and knowledgeable member of the staff recommended cheese to me. 

Thus, you can’t really have cheese without wine, or vice versa, and if the French know cheese, they sure as hell know wine as well.  While I didn’t necessarily drink as much wine as I would have wanted, I got a fair taste.  Besides the white I had, I stuck to Bordeaux.  The first glass I had was from a wine bar right across the street from Hemingway’s apartment in the 5th arrondissement.  I love the Spanish wines for sure, but the Bordeaux was very on point, kind of like drinking a tangy liquid blossom, if that makes sense.  


The other Bordeaux I had was with my last meal in Paris, cuisse du canard, or roasted duck thigh.  My friend promised to take me to her and her friends’ “spot,” which I knew boded very well for me.  Whenever there’s a “spot,” the odds are in favor of deliciousness.  I'm not sure of the name or its exact location, but it was a smallish restaurant with kind of a hipped-up classic vibe, somewhere around metro Belleville.  

The duck thigh was cooked to perfection, crispy on the outside, almost fall off the bone tender on the inside, and accompanied by garlic roasted potatoes and a small arugula salad.  I was drinking a bacchus of wine, slightly larger than your average glass.  With the food, the wine, the red and white checked table-cloth, I felt très français.   





Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Paris: Fin



Although I’d taken several semesters of French, I found myself much more uncomfortable than I expected speaking French, especially after having been in Spanish mode for several months. It was a very similar experience to coming to Madrid and being forced to use Spanish in real life, and subsequently realizing that what you thought you knew is actually very little. I found I was lacking key vocabulary in French, making it hard to not look like another dumb foreigner, such as when I realized I didn’t know what the French word for “check” was and then had to mime signing a receipt to get my point across (apparently it’s “la/e note”). Or when a Frenchman at my friend’s bar asked me in around about way if I spoke French, I was able to reply with “un petit peu,” but not much else.

I did notice, however, that even after a couple days in Paris, my mind started to shift more into French, and I feel like given the opportunity to be in Paris for a decent amount of time (at least a month or two) my French would come around pretty quickly. At first, my go to response was just to answer in Spanish, like if someone asked me what I wanted and there was some confusion, he or she would indicate something, and I would respond with “sísísí” rather than “oui.” Then when I got back to Madrid, I had to stop myself from saying “oui” to Spaniards.

In the discomfort of trying to communicate across language barriers, we tend to get a little reflexive I think, to develop knee jerk reactions to get our point across, making the most of the little we know. The more comfortable we get in a language, the less awkward these knee jerks are. At this point, I feel very comfortable navigating in Spanish. Sure there are occasional hiccups, but overall, I can communicate, hold a conversation, find my way around etc. Dealing in French definitely felt like I was going back at the beginning, but I was encouraged by how quickly my ear/mind got used to being around French again.

Then of course there are the Parisians themselves, who notoriously turn their nose up at anyone who doesn’t speak French, or even anyone who isn’t Parisian. One of my friends who worked in France as a language assistant said that even if you do speak French as a foreigner, the Parisians aren’t much nicer.

And yet, the great paradox is that Paris is one of the biggest tourist sites in the world, and so you have an astounding and diverse amount of tourists, from all different parts of the world, that obviously don’t all speak French. So you have all the bad aspects of tourism, the key chains, the shirts, the berets. When I was in Budapest, I stayed with a group of Parisians in my hostel, and I talked to one of the girls (who was extremely nice and adorably French) about my trip to Paris and the bad rep that Parisians have.

She said, “I just don’t understand why we are so unable to share our city with visitors. We just don’t seem to know how.” It’s not really hard to figure out. For the most part, tourists suck. Even speaking as a tourist. I feel like anyone who travels and who is remotely conscientious of their situation has to feel at least a little dissonance, a little self-hate, at being a foreigner in someone else’s home. Combine this inherent suckiness of tourists with one of the largest tourist destinations of the world, and you’ve got a lot of suckiness on your hands, whether you’re French or not.

This all being said, you have to take some efforts to navigate the tourism in Paris. I didn’t go to the Louvre or any of the other museums. I didn’t go to Notre Dame or the Arc du Triomphe or other of the “go to places.” I still had a wonderful time. I was happy at how easily I was able to tailor my trip to my own interests, which for the most part led through the major parts of the city without getting bogged down by lines or other annoying touristisms. If you’re familiar with the show Rocket Power, the term “shoobies” seems appropriate, even if we’re not talking about sandals on a beach.

The second night I was there, I found myself unable to sleep, thinking of all the stories, all the lives lived and deaths died, the weight of grandeur that is palpable when you’re there. When you are there, you can’t do much better.

To conclude:
YES, YOU SHOULD GO TO PARIS. YES, THERE ARE A LOT OF TOURISTS. DON’T BE COMPLETELY IGNORANT OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE. YES, FRENCH PEOPLE MIGHT NOT BE THE NICEST. YOU SHOULD STILL GO. WALK THE STREETS. DRINK WINE. EAT BAGUETTES AND CROISSANTS AND CHEESE. SIT ON A TERRACE. APPRECIATE.


Monday, February 2, 2015

Paris 4

Passing by a carousel at the bottom of the stairs leading down from Le Sacre Coeur, I walked south down a street filled with tourist and souvenir shops. Outside the shops and on the corners, men jangled Eiffel Tower key chains on rings the size of dinner plates.

I passed through different rings of the city. First, more residential, with open air fruit and vegetable markets, and then more commercial, name brand shops, H&M, Prada, Gucci, etc. Finally, I moved into the museum area, right before the Seine, with the Louvre, the Tulleries, etc.

I walked along the Seine as the sun went down, past the bookstores, past the love-locked bridges. I got to the Eiffel Tower right as the lights were coming on. I tried my best to get a vertical shot to fit in the frame, and took one from underneath as I walked by all those waiting in line to go up in the tower. I didn’t linger, and I tried to imagine the number of photos and selfies that are taken at the tower on any one day.

I headed towards the Boulevard Saint-Germain. I stopped for a coffee at Les Deux Magots, a café famous for its literary patrons, ranging from Hemingway, Joyce, and Stein, to Sartre and de Beauvoir. I sat out on the terrace, enjoying my coffee and the ambiance, watching the people walk by and listening to the conversations in France. I got the bill and found out that my double espresso cost 6,90 euros and tried not to let that upset me.

I was looking for Hemingway’s and Stein’s apartments, which are both located around Saint-Germain, in the 5th and 6th arrondissements. The literary pilgrimage is at once historical and personal. On the one hand, there is the pure historical value of seeing where a particularly talented person did his or her own work. On the other hand, the personal hand, the matter is a little more complicated. If one believes that he or she is an artist of some sort, it seems to me that there is a certain commonality that he or she feels with other artists, no matter when they lived.

This commonality is a conductivity, a receptivity to Life, that when all goes well, when sparks fly, beautiful and affecting things are created. And so it seems that there are areas where these sparks fly more often, where inspiration pops out in more places, where the voltage is cranked a little bit higher. This leads to more creation, more art, more ideas.

Paris is, and has been, one of the most turnt places in the Western world. To visit the residences of the masters is to hope that it rubs off on you, that the streets, the rhythm, that inspired them will still have enough juice to at least give you some tingles if not full blown illumination. 

I found Stein’s apartment that she shared with Alice B. Toklas, on what is now a calm and residential side street, with a group of people that may have been homeless on the other side. From there I went east, circumnavigating the Jardin du Luxembourg, and passing by the Pantheon where there was some sort of protest going on, with a medium sized group holding flags and yelling in what seemed to be Arabic.



Hemingway’s first apartment is in the Latin Quarter, which appeared to be quite the hip place.  It was less posh than a lot of Paris and seemed to be cheaper on the whole, with lots of cool bars and restaurants, especially more ethnic offerings.  I found Hemmingway’s apartment, took a picture, and then immediately went into a wine bar across the street, bought a glass of Bordeaux so I could use the bathroom.  Relieved, I sat out on the terrace, drinking my wine and nibbling on the bit of cheese they gave me, feeling pretty damn content with my life.